Query: How 2D semiconductors could extend Moore’s law

Candidate papers:

abstract: Incredibly thin transistors could deliver even more powerful computers if three research challenges can be solved, argue Ming Yang Li and colleagues.Incredibly thin transistors could deliver even more powerful computers if three research challenges can be solved, argue Ming Yang Li and colleagues.
author_names: Ming-Yang Li

S K Su

H -S Philip Wong

Lain-Jong Li
title: How 2D semiconductors could extend Moore's law
venue: Nature
year: 2019

abstract: White people make pollution, others breathe it in. Plus: nearly half of childhood cancer goes undiagnosed and 2D semiconductors could extend Moore's law. White people make pollution, others breathe it in. Plus: nearly half of childhood cancer goes undiagnosed and 2D semiconductors could extend Moore's law.
author_names: Flora Graham
title: Daily briefing: Black and Hispanic Americans breathe more than their fair share of deadly air pollution
venue: Nature
year: 2019

abstract: The challenges of electronic design are escalating as software and embedded processors are fast becoming a more dominant component of electronic products. Software is now acknowledged as the most effective way for electronics companies to differentiate their products. But what if the processors running the software aren't up to the task? Electronics companies are increasingly adopting a new system level design methodology to stay competitive, one that enables design that is centred on custom processors and software. The ripple effects of system level design are even affecting the way that semiconductor companies take products to market and how their customers choose and use silicon. Mr Naumann will provide examples of how companies adopting advanced system level design can gain competitive advantage, and the issues to be resolved in the drive to extend Moore's Law.
author_names: Alan Naumann
title: Keynote address: Was Darwin wrong? Has design evolution stopped at the RTL level. or will software and custom processors (or system level design) extend Moore's law?
venue: DATE '07
year: 2007

abstract: The challenges of electronic design are escalating as software and embedded processors are fast becoming a more dominant component of electronic products. Software is now acknowledged as the most effective way for electronics companies to differentiate their products. But what if the processors running the software aren't up to the task? Electronics companies are increasingly adopting a new system level design methodology to stay competitive, one that enables design that is centred on custom processors and software. The ripple effects of systems level design are even affecting the way that semiconductor companies take products to market and how their customers choose and use silicon.
author_names: Alan Naumann
title: Was Darwin Wrong? Has Design Evolution Stopped at the RTL Level. or Will Software and Custom Processors (or System Level Design) Extend Moore's Law?
year: 2007

abstract: Moore's law relates how the integration of semiconductors has progressed in time. This research shows that the exponential trend shown in the electronics manufacturing industry can have applications elsewhere. This study shows that the internal combustion engine followed the same trend for over 70 years. Though not the most used engine variable, engine power density shows the same trends for engines as transistor density does for microchips. This now mature technology has ended its period of rapid growth. However, the present day engine trends can show how Moore's law can be extended to include the slower growth of long established technologies. Because exponential growth cannot go on forever, the extension Moore's law requires that the logistic function be used. The new function also allows one to predict a theoretical value for maximum power density.
author_names: M Laviolette
title: On Moore's Law and Its Application to Spark Ignition Engine Technology
year: 2009

abstract: The purpose of this paper is to identify the organizational constraints on science innovations in the midst of the increasing complexity of technology and markets and to search for measures to overcome them. For this purpose, we scrutinize the rise and fall of Japanese chipmakers in their commodity DRAM business during the last three decades, during which time all of them have been deeply wounded. We take up this business case mainly because the Japanese semiconductor industry seems to be a forerunner of various science based industries facing rapid globalization and could provide instructive examples for them in an age of speed to market. We think that the rise and fall of Japanese chipmakers in their commodity DRAM business has been deeply influenced by three kinds of ever growing complexities: the growing market complexity triggered by the collapse of commodity DRAM prices in 1996, the growing (manufacturing) system complexity boosted by the advent of 200mm fabrication plants (fabs) in the early 1990s, and the growing process complexity in fabrication technologies necessitated by 64Mb commodity DRAMs. We explain how and why, compared with U.S. and Korean competitors, Japanese chipmakers could not respond to these growing complexities in a systematic and well organized manner.
author_names: Hiroyuki Chuma

Norikazu Hashimoto
title: Moore's Law Increasing Complexity, and the Limits of Organization: The Modern Significance of Japanese Chipmakers' Commodity DRAM Business
year: 2010

abstract: Moore's law relates how the integration of semiconductors has progressed in time. This research shows that the exponential trend shown in the electronics manufacturing industry can have applications elsewhere. This study shows that the internal combustion engine followed the same trend for over 70 years. Though not the most used engine variable, engine power density shows the same trends for engines as transistor density does for microchips. This now mature technology has ended its period of rapid growth. However the present day engine trends can show how Moore's law can be extended to include the slower growth of long established technologies. Because exponential growth cannot go on forever, the extension Moore's law requires that the logistic function be used. The new function also allows one to predict a theoretical value for maximum power density.Copyright (c) 2005 by ASME
author_names: M Laviolette
title: On Moore's Law and Its Application to SI Engine Technology
year: 2005

abstract: The inventions of the transistor and the integrated circuit set in motion the extraordinary progress of computing performance that has kept the number of transistors on a chip doubling every two years without increasing the price. Ever since the trend best known as Moore's law was postulated, it has served as a guide to identify long term R&D targets for the semiconductor industry. For years, chip makers have been consistently able to figure out new ways to shrink the transistor size in time for the next node to hit the market. The downscaling of transistors has come a long way from the very first commercial 10 mm technology to the 10 nm node that is currently being introduced. These days, however, keeping pace with the traditional two year cadence has become an increasingly challenging endeavour. This fact was fully acknowledged in the final International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors1 (ITRS) in 2015, which predicted that transistors will reach their minimal limit soon after 2021. Although 7 nm FinFET devices are expected to ship sometime in 2018, the foundries face an uphill struggle to find cost effective engineering solutions for the next 5 nm node as the existing transistor architecture is nearing the end of its scaling lifespan. The FinFET, featured in every modern microprocessor, was originally designed to mitigate leakage current issues associated with a planar FET geometry. This device has 3D silicon structures that jut out from the substrate like a fin, hence the name. As the fins continue to get thinner, the technology is expected to hit another wall at a width of 5 nm due to channel size variations and potential mobility loss. Hence, to keep Moore's law going, new engineering strategies are urgently needed. For chips to get denser, the manufacturers may still try to extend FinFET to 5 nm or, building upon the existing technology, switch to gate all around (GAA) FETs. In terms of its geometry, a GAA FET closely resembles a FinFET except that the gate surrounds the channel region on all sides. Owning to these similarities, the GAA FET is considered a likely candidate for the 5 nm node, which, according to some predictions, may be extended further down to 3 nm. This scenario looks very plausible judging by the recent IBM demonstration2 of a test silicon chip containing 30 billion horizontal GAA FETs. This technological marvel has a 40% performance edge over commercial 10 nm chips and offers 75% lower power consumption at the same level of performance. Besides, as opposed to 7 nm technology the newly presented chip accommodates a whopping 10 billion additional transistors. Each device contains a stack of three silicon nanosheets between the source and drain electrodes wrapped in the gate. Analogous to 7 nm IBM transistors, the fabrication process of a GAA FET with its tiny features requires an extra step that involves extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Despite the remarkable resolution limit of less than 4 nm, the deployment of EUV for volume manufacturing has been postponed for years due to its extreme complexity, high implementation cost and multiple reliability issues. Therefore it is no secret that the 5 nm node will cost manufacturers dearly, making the future of transistor downscaling economically irrelevant and potentially putting the technology out of reach for a large number of consumer applications. Economic arguments aside, vertical transistors with nanowire channels could provide another way of cramming more transistors onto a chip similar to the Samsung 3D V NAND memory3. But then again, opting for vertical transistors won't offer any long term relief for the chip makers, as according to the same ITRS the 3D technology will run out of steam by 20241. The reason is that existing chip cooling solutions will no longer be sufficient to tackle ever increasing power dissipation densities. Another critical issue that urgently needs an effective engineering solution is the so called interconnect bottleneck that comes as a result of tighter packing of the components on a microprocessor and could severely impair the speed of computing. Finally, looking for new channel materials instead of changing a transistor design is also under consideration. To that end, semiconductors such as III V and germanium are being considered as the most promising silicon substitutes in terms of mobility. With all these challenges in mind, the manufacturers are clearly not in a rush to introduce another node or switch to an alternative transistor type. Clinging on to the purely economic yet short lived strategy of further FinFET downscaling would help chip makers squeeze every last drop out of the existing technology and justify billions of dollars of investment. Yet, the future of the 5 nm node and beyond is far from certain, especially in the absence of one clear transistor contender and other much needed cost effective technological innovations. After decades of the semiconductor industry faithfully living by the golden rule smaller, faster, cheaper the time has come to re evaluate its capacity for fabricating eversmaller features at ever increasing densities. After all, it doesn't really matter whether Moore's law lives or dies as long as consumer needs are satisfied at a reasonable cost.
title: Moore's deviation.
venue: Nature nanotechnology
year: 2017

abstract: Ultra wide bandgap (UWBG) semiconductors and ultra thin two dimensional materials (2D) are at the very frontier of the electronics for energy management or energy electronics. A new generation of UWBG semiconductors will open new territories for higher power rated power electronics and deeper ultraviolet optoelectronics. Gallium oxide Ga2O3 (4.5 4.9 eV) has recently emerged as a suitable platform for extending the limits which are set by conventional ~3 eV) WBG e.g. SiC and GaN and transparent conductive oxides (TCO) e.g. In2O3, ZnO, SnO2. Besides, Ga2O3, the first efficient oxide semiconductor for energy electronics, is opening the door to many more semiconductor oxides (indeed, the largest family of UWBGs) to be investigated. Among these new power electronic materials, ZnGa2O4 ~5 eV) enables bipolar energy electronics, based on a spinel chemistry, for the first time. In the lower power rating end, power consumption also is also a main issue for modern computers and supercomputers. With the predicted end of the Moore's law, the memory wall and the heat wall, new electronics materials and new computing paradigms are required to balance the big data (information) and energy requirements, just as the human brain does. Atomically thin 2D materials, and the rich associated material systems (e.g. graphene (metal) MoS2 (semiconductor) and h BN (insulator) have also attracted a lot of attention recently for beyond silicon neuromorphic computing with record ultra low power consumption. Thus, energy nanoelectronics based on UWBG and 2D materials are simultaneously extending the current frontiers of electronics and addressing the issue of electricity consumption, a central theme in the actions against climate change.
author_names: Amador Perez-Tomas

E Chikoizde

David J Rogers
title: A walk on the frontier of energy electronics with power ultra wide bandgap oxides and ultra thin neuromorphic 2D materials
venue: OPTO
year: 2021

abstract: Improvements in microprocessor performance over time have been expressed through the use of Moore's law, an observation that the number of transistors on a semiconductor device could be expected to double approximately every 18 24 months. Other performance indicators have focused on processing rates, for example, microprocessor clock speed expressed in megahertz or gigahertz. Today, energy efficiency has become a crucial aspect in the design and manufacturing of high performance microprocessor products. Limitations in current silicon manufacturing technology, as well as practical and environmental considerations are behind this change. This paper describes how new transistor designs and materials of construction are resulting in increased energy efficiency, and lower power in today's high performance microprocessors.
author_names: Donna M Sadowy
title: New microprocessor features for lower power and increased performance: doing "Moore's" with less
venue: Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment, 2005.
year: 2005