Objective
The overall objective of this programme was to develop a specific submicron bipolar technology suitable for manufacturing very high performance integrated circuits, such as high-speed circuits for Electronic Data Processing (EDP) and Digital Signal Processing (DSP).
At the start of the programme the majority of advanced bipolar processes used 1-1.5 micron feature sizes exhibiting gate delays of 200 ps and an integration level of less than 5000 gates. The target at the end of the project was to develop a submicron process with <100 ps gate delays and integration levels of 20 000 gates. Such a large change in the state of the art required a two-stage development programme with two separate processes and demonstrators, produced in years 3 and 5 of the programme.
The overall objective of this programme was to develop a specific submicron bipolar technology suitable for manufacturing very high performance integrated circuits.
During the execution of this programme the following processes were developed:
trench etching;
trench etchback;
hyper shallow emitter base by implantation through oxide or by direct BF2 implantation;
rapid thermal annealing for the emitter base;
double polysilicon contact structures;
polycide interconnect;
new intrinsic gettering techniques;
improved stepper lithography.
These techniques have been assembled into a single process.
2 supplementary research topics were also pursued, SELOX technology and new polyimides.
2 demonstrators were produced using a common gate array concept. Both demonstrators used a similar 3 transistor cell gate array with resistors trimmed using the silicide mask. The demonstrators had a similar area, but the submicron demonstrator had approximately twice as many transistors.
During the execution of this programme the following processes were developed: trench etching; trench etchback; hyper shallow emitter base by implantation through oxide or by direct BF2 implantation; rapid thermal annealing for the emitter base; double polysilicon contact structures; polycide interconnect; new intrinsic gettering techniques; improved stepper lithography. These techniques have been assembled into a single process as outlined below:
1-micron processSubmicron process
Process featuresTrench isolationTrench isolationPolysilicon emitterPolysilicon emitterThermal drive-inRTA drive-inSingle poly contactsDouble poly contacts
Unit gain frequency (GHz)9>15
Gate delay100 ps50 ps
Power delay product130 fJ60 fJ
Metal pitch6 microns4 microns
Demonstrator17K transistors45K transistors
Two supplementary research topics were also pursued, SELOX technology and new polyimides. In the case of SELOX technology, a novel sidewall contacted structure was developed by the Technical University of Berlin. Basic transistors were demonstrated and a full investigation of the concept was undertaken. Thomson LCR, Rhone Poulenc and Cemota worked on new polyimides. The stability of these new materials was investigated and research was performed on low dielectric constant materials. The industrial partners were also involved in evaluation of these new materials.
During the five-year project, two demonstrators were produced using a common gate array concept. Both demonstrators used a similar three-transistor cell gate array with resistors trimmed using the silicide mask. The submicron demonstrator used a 66% scaled layout. The demonstrators had a similar area of 10 x 8 mm, but the submicron demonstrator had approximately twice as many transistors.
The customisation for the one-micron demonstrator consisted of a 4x512 stage shift register that operated at 950MHz. The design was performed by all the industrial partners.
The submicron demonstrator underwent two customisations. The first, designed by the Technical University of Berlin, consisted of a four-tap digital filter for HDTV applications. The circuit is essentially a digital transversal filter consisting of a 12 bit shift register, four 12 x 16 multipliers, summation elements, and control logic. A second customisation is a 10 000-gate array capable of clock frequencies of up to 2.5 GHz. This is a programmable delay line that includes 1036 d-type flip-flops operating at a clock rate of 1 GHz.
Exploitation
At the end of the project a number of high-performance parts were in the pre-production stages. They included dividers, PLL synthesisers, direct frequency synthesisers, and analogue/digital and digital/analogue converters. In addition, this technology wasused in various RACE programme projects. The enhancement and exploitation of this technology is taking place under project 2016 (BASE-TIP).
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering signal processing
- natural sciences computer and information sciences data science data processing
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Coordinator
NN12 8EQ Towcester
United Kingdom
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