Breakthrough in plasma etching fabrication will enable more transistors on circuits

11/13/2013 - 00:00

Advanced plasma-based etching is a key enabler of Moore's Law that observes that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles nearly every two years. It is the plasma's ability to reproduce fine patterns on silicon that makes this scaling possible and has made plasma sources ubiquitous in microchip manufacturing.

A groundbreaking fabrication technique, based on what is called a DC-augmented capacitively coupled plasma source, affords chip makers unprecedented control of the plasma.