IBM researchers planned to describe an advance in chip-making yesterday that could pave the way for new generations of superchips.
The development, which comes from materials researched in the design of advanced lenses and related technologies, will make it possible to create semiconductors with wires thinner than 30 nanometers, one-third the width in today's industry-standard chips.
The advance potentially clears one of the biggest hurdles facing the progress of Moore's Law, the observation of Gordon Moore, a co-founder of the Intel Corp, that the density of chips doubles roughly every two years. Moore made the observation about chip-making technology in 1965, and most semiconductor engineers now believe that the doubling rate will continue through at least the middle of the next decade.
Currently, the densest computer memory chips store 4 billion bits of information; the extension of Moore's Law might make possible a generation storing 64 billion bits by 2013. Such a chip could store roughly 2,000 songs based on today's storage standards.
The industry now uses advanced laser light sources to photo-etch wire lines that are finer than the wavelength of light itself. This is done by generating interference patterns that allow subwavelength resolution. But there had been a general consensus in the industry that this technology would fail below 40 nanometers, requiring a shift to X-ray light sources or other printing technologies.
A group of IBM researchers who collaborated with a team from JSR Micro, an advanced materials company based in Sunnyvale, California, will present papers describing the advances at an industry technical conference on photolithography to be held in San Jose, California, beginning yesterday.
The researchers have created the thinnest line patterns to date using deep ultraviolet lithography, the laser technology used to print circuits on chips. The research has yielded a set of ultrafine lines, each only 29.9 nanometers in width. (A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.)
IBM technologists said the demonstration reduced the risk in the decisions being made by the industry as to which technologies to bet on as many as five years in the future.
"We would like to show a pathway to continue optical lithography," said Robert Allen, manager of lithography materials at the IBM Almaden Research Center.
The industry has also been pursuing X-ray light sources as a path to the future. That technology, however, would require that the semiconductor manufacturing industry be drastically revamped. For example, using X-ray light sources would require the industry to use mirrors rather than optical lenses to focus the X-ray sources.
The advance also indicates that the industry has found a way to continue to extend the life of argon fluoride excimer lasers that generate the ultraviolet light used in the photolithographic process. Those lasers have a wavelength of 193 nanometers, yet they are now used commercially to create chips with components as fine as 65 nanometers.
The key to pushing the technology further is a fluid immersion process for conducting the light onto the material that is etched to form the circuit pattern.
The researchers discovered that they could enhance the resolving power of the light source by shifting to a lens made from a crystalline quartz material and exotic immersion liquids that have better refraction properties than those currently used by the industry.
"This is significant," said Fred Zieber, a semiconductor industry analyst at Pathfinder Research. He noted, however, there is more required to turn this into a commercial lithographic process.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique