Chinese Institute of Microelectronics created 22nm transistors

The Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMECAS) announced that they managed to create a transistor with a gate length of 22nm (for comparison, 22nm transistors in Intel processors have a gate length of 26nm). Transistors use a metal gate and a high-k gate dielectric (necessary to reduce leakage current by tunneling electrons through an ultra-thin gate dielectric layer).



Transistors do not use the “3-way gate” in the Intel style, but the more traditional planar gate-last transistors (when the gate is formed last).



The PRC initiated these studies in 2009 as one of the main national projects. According to IMECAS, the development of 22-nm integrated circuit technology in China will allow saving huge amounts of money on the technologies currently being imported (or bargain for more favorable prices).

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To understand the order of prices - Angstrom-T 130nm technology cost ~ 120 million euros (2007 year), 90nm Micron - about 27 million euros (2011 year, according to press reports). On more subtle norms - the cost grows exponentially. Perhaps in the future technology will have to buy from China.





Clearly visible individual atoms of silicon (at the bottom of the picture). IL is an interface layer of SiO ₂ between silicon and a high-k HfO ₂ dielectric (it doesn’t fit directly).





Bright lines at an angle of 45 degrees in silicon is an artificially created defect in the crystal lattice to create silicon voltage in the transistor channel (this is necessary to increase its operation speed).