Advancement of Ion Implanters That Enabled Moore's Law and Evolution of Semiconductor Devices

Since the start of LSI devices in early 70s, the manufacturing technology of microchips has evolved at a tremendous speed predicted by Moore's law. Ion Implantation technique was proposed and adopted as the standard doping method by replacing the diffusion process in 70s and enabled the device scaling together with performance gain. The combination of ion implantation and photo resist based lithography has been the main driver for scaling the self-aligned MOS transistors. During the period, ion implanters have evolved and are still evolving to address the ever-changing needs posed by the advancement and the structural changes of micro devices in terms of wafer size, energy range, dose range, angle control and wafer charge neutralization. Ion implanters are now used not only for doping purposes but also for a variety of precision material modification to enable advanced device fabrication. Damage engineering by the latest thermal implantation technique has also added a new dimension for process control as it can decouple the damage generation from the ion implantation, which was never possible before.