TSV-free FinFET-based Monolithic 3D+-IC with computing-in-memory SRAM cell for intelligent IoT devices

This paper presents the first monolithic 3D vertical cross-tier computing-in-memory (CIM) SRAM cell fabricated using low cost TSV-free FinFET-based 3D
⁺
-IC technology. The 9T 3D CIM SRAM cell is able to compute NAND/AND, OR/NOR and XOR/XNOR operations within a single memory cycle. We fabricated stackable multi-fin single-grained Si FinFET using low thermal-budget CO
2
far-infrared laser annealing (FIR-LA) for activation and self-aligned silicide. The proposed device achieved high Ion (320 μA/μm (n-FET) and 275 μA/μm (p-FET)) and high I
on
/I
off
(>10
⁷
). The proposed scheme enables the fabrication of energy and area efficient circuits for cost-aware intelligent IoT devices. For proposed 9T CIM SRAM cell, the monolithic 3D device reduces area overhead by 51%, compared to the 2D version, thanks to the stacking of three additional transistors above the 6T SRAM cell.