Future Beam-Controlled Processing Technologies for Microelectronics

Beam-controlled processes that utilize photons, electrons, ions, and molecules have become essential in the fabrication of microelectronics. These processes are required for the deposition, patterning, etching, and characterization of semiconductor, packaging, and processing-related materials that form the basis of the integrated circuit. Fabrication techniques demand an increasing precision as the physical size of the device structures shrink to submicrometer dimensions. In this article, selected examples of beam-controlled processes expected to be important in the microelectronics industry are described. The continued rapid advances in microelectronics technology that underlie the electronic information-processing industry require the continued development and refinement of these new techniques. Beam-controlled processing will affect all areas of semiconductor and microelectronic fabrication and packaging. The dramatic expansion in the microelectronics industry has been the result, in part, of the development of higher levels of integration and circuit density. Smaller devices are required to maintain this progress. New lithography techniques utilizing photon, electron, or ion beams have led to the shrinking of the lateral feature size of a transistor to the submicrometer regime. Vertical device dimensions can be reduced even further to well below 0.1 $\mu $m through the use of epitaxial techniques. The advantages in fabrication afforded by these beam technologies will certainly justify the increased complexity and difficulties in their development. Meeting the challenges of these technologies will also open the door to new important physical phenomena useful in the next generation of information-processing machines.