CMOS technology trends and economics

CMOS has become the mainstream IC technology. Extending well into the sub-0.1- mu m regime, its potential provides enormous chip complexities for integration of complete systems on one chip. A number of general trends in the development and manufacturing of CMOS technologies and ICs are discussed. It is argued that unrestricted availability of this technology is of strategic importance for the European high-technology industry. Exploding development costs and investments per technology generation require global cooperation, particularly for the relatively small European IC manufacturers to survive in this key technology. Trends in the development of 64-Mb and 256-Mb DRAMs, optical lithography processes, multilayer resist technologies, retrograde-well structures for CMOS device isolation, low-resistive and dense interconnection systems with low capacitances and silicon-on-insulator technology for the development of CMOS devices are described.<
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