Scientists Pave Way For 25nm CPUs 82
arcticstoat writes in with word that scientists at the Space Nanotechnology Laboratory at MIT have found a new way of extending Moore's law into the future — they have succeeded in etching a grid of 25nm lines into a silicon wafer. The article notes that this technique could be used for writing the grid on which chips are laid down, but that the electronic elements would have to be written using more complex techniques. "[Researchers] created an interference pattern using light from a laser with a wavelength of 351 nm. The pattern consists of alternating light and dark zones repeating every 200 nm. This allowed them to etch 25-nm lines into a silicon wafer, each 175 nm apart. They then repeated the process three times, each time shifting the interference pattern by 50 nm and etching another 25-nm groove. The resulting grid has alternating 25-nm stripes and grooves..."
This is a bad headline title. (Score:5, Informative)
ASML has roadmap upto 16 nm chips, (Score:2, Informative)
ASML already has working tools for 32 nm litho. 16 nm is planned in next couple of years.
http://www.asml.com
Re:wow - 25nm (Score:3, Informative)
er, MIT is a school in Massachusettes. They have a laboratory called the Space Nanotechnology Lab [mit.edu].
Shrinking in size is one part of the problem (Score:4, Informative)
linewidth != wavelength (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is a bad headline title. (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the fact that they've been creating features smaller than the wavelength of the illuminating light is nothing to write home about either.
Current chips (since at least the 180nm node) are being fabbed this way at all microelectronics fabs all around the world. We already use 193nm light to create features as small as 22nm (using tricks like immersion, double-exposure and OPC)
This doesn't impress me at all (Score:5, Informative)
First, IAALE (I am a lithography engineer) working on Intel's 22nm process technology. Let's clear up a few misconceptions:
1) The name of a logic node is directly related to the size of the features being made. Those names (e.g. 65nm, 45m, 32nm, etc.) used to relate to the "half-pitch" of the minimum pitch that was printed. But that is not true today. 65nm used a minimum pitch of ~200nm, 45nm used ~140nm and 32nm is using ~100nm. The next node, 22nm is slated to use minimum a pitch of 72nm. The features discussed in this article have a pitch of 50nm, which would be equivalent to the node after 22nm, i.e. 16nm.
2) It's not hard to print features smaller than the wavelength of light. For the lens based systems we used, the Rayleigh criterion gives the minimum pitch possible: 0.25*lambda/NA, where lambda=wavelength (193nm) and NA=numerical aperature (1.35 for the best lenses). So 72nm is the minimum pitch, already much smaller than the wavelength
3) I hate to break it to these researchers, but interferometry has been used for a looong time to make gratings. Search for "interferomety lithography" on Google Scholar. The fourth link is called "Nanolithography using extreme ultraviolet lithography interferometry: 19 nm lines and spaces". That paper is from 1999. And they did that one exposure, not three (using a smaller wavelength).
You would actually need at least one more exposure to divide the grating into something that resembled a logic circuit. The technique in this artcle is not practcal for a number of reasons, but we can do better than them using pitch-doubling techniques and only two exposures.
Re:Is the gap closing? (Score:1, Informative)
Both Xilinx and Altera are fabless so their time to market depends on their ability to execute given the process parameters or cell libraries supplied by the foundry of their choice.