CMOS TECHNOLOGY: ADVANCES AND PERSPECTIVES

Modern electronics, known as microelectronics, has evolved astonishingly in the last decades thanks to scientific and technological advances. In the early 1960, Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors were developed, followed by Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor technology, giving the field of microelectronics an amazing improvement. Since then, the semiconductor industry has been guided by the continuous reduction of the transistor dimensions used in integrated circuits, allowing the development of the current state of technology with lengths down to tens of nanometers. As the transistor dimensions are shrunk, different phenomena appear that cause performance degradation of the devices. Hence, technological alternatives have been proposed in order to continue with the progress observed in the last decades. In this context, Multiple Gate Field Effect Transistors appears as a viable alternative to reach sub- 10nm nodes. However, in order to keep such progress for future technology nodes, it is necessary to solve a number of technological and scientific challenges, due to the difficulty of fabricating transistors at such scale and the physical phenomena presented. In this contribution, a revision of the main keystones of microelectronics, stressing the Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor technology case, as well as the main challenges for future technology nodes are addressed.