Neng-Kuo Chen

A low operating power FinFET transistor module featuring scaled gate stack and strain engineering for 32/28nm SoC technology

We show that FinFET, a leading transistor architecture candidate of choice for high performance CPU applications [1–3], can also be extended for general purpose SoC applications by proper device optimization. We demonstrate superior, best-in-its-class performance to our knowledge, as well as multi-Vt flexibility for low-operating power (LOP) applications. By high-k/metal-gate (HK/MG) and process flow optimizations, significant drive current (ION) improvement and leakage current (IOFF) reduction have been achieved through equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) scaling and carrier mobility improvement. N-FinFET and P-FinFET achieve, when normalized to Weff (Weff=2xHf+Wf), ION of 1325 µA/µm and 1000 µA/µm at 1 nA/µm leakage current under VDD of 1 V, and 960 uA/um and 690 uA/um at 1 nA/um under Vdd of 0.8V, respectively. This FinFET transistor module is promising for a 32/28nm SoC technology.