Leading IC manufacturers are introducing forms of strained silicon for next generations of semiconductor products. Strained silicon has been adopted as an efficient pathway to greatly enhanced performance – a 1% silicon lattice strain typically results in a doubling or tripling of the electronic mobility. This approach does not require new device structures and is closely compatible with standard CMOS processing. The industry has identified new metrology capabilities as critical to enable process control for strained silicon structures. However, available methods do not meet the requirements for adoption into production process control. With technology created specifically for rapid characterization of ultra-thin semiconductor films, Xitronix is poised to take advantage of this gap in semiconductor metrology capability. This market will expand to include characterization of new band-engineered thin films.
2011 Insight Abstract
2011 Frontiers Abstract
2007 Frontiers Paper
US Patent Pending 2010/0315646 A1
US Patent 7,391,507
US Patent 7,239,392
US Patent 6,963,402 |
