| Posted: March 23, 2009 |
German project DECISIF starts research on strained silicon |
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(Nanowerk News) Electronic equipment makes our everyday routine much easier – in our
jobs as well as in our leisure time. Within the DECISIF project, scientific and industrial cooperation partners
want to explore the potential of “strained silicon” in order to manufacture even more powerful and energysaving
devices for laptops, mobile phones and MP3-players.
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DECISIF is a milestone for the future production of more powerful microprocessors and memories with lower
energy consumption resulting in extended operating time.
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The Federal Ministry of Education and Science (BMBF) granted EUR 8.1m for DECISIF (DEvice and CIrcuit
performance boosted through SIlicon material Fabrication). Another EUR 6.4m will be contributed by the
project partners GLOBALFOUNDRIES Dresden, Siltronic AG, AIXTRON AG, Research Center Jülich as well
as the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics. There will also be collaboration with French partners
STMicroelectronics, SOITEC and LETI within the scope of the EU-project Medea. The project is coordinated
by Prof. Siegfried Mantl of Research Center Jülich
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A technique patented by the Research Center Jülich will be used amongst others to fabricate strained silicon
with already mentioned favorable properties. The crystal lattice of silicon is expanded by mechanical strain to
change the electrical properties of silicon: the charge carriers are able to move significantly faster through
the transistor, the potential switching frequency increases and power consumption decreases. This clears
the way for more powerful and at the same time even smaller transistors. Properties of (globally) strained
silicon will be combined with new techniques to create locally strained silicon to reach an exceptionally high
mobility of the charge carrier within transistors.
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To achieve this goal nano structuring will be applied.
DECISIF will build a bridge from fundamental research of strained silicon to almost production-ready
process. Combining the new strained silicon and the existing silicon-on-insulator technique a new material
generation on industry-compatible 300 mm wafers will be developed. These wafers will provide the base for
future device technologies and transistors with up to 22 nm minimum geometry.
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