A perspective from the 2003 ITRS: MOSFET scaling trends, challenges, and potential solutions

The IC industry has been rapidly and consistently scaling the design rules, increasing the chip and wafer size, and cleverly improving the design of devices and circuits for over 35 years. As a result, the industry has enjoyed exponential increases in chip speed and functional density versus time combined with exponential decreases in power dissipation and cost per function versus time, as projected by Moore's Law by G.E. Moore (1995). As metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) are scaled to deep submicron dimensions, the integrated circuit (IC) industry is running into increasing difficulties in continuing to scale at the accustomed rate, owing to the small dimensions and certain key device, material, and process limits that are being approached.