Transistors Advance With Ceramic Material

Transistors Advance With Ceramic Material

The continuing debate over the health implications of using mobile phones is another major issue. International safety regulations defined in terms of the specific energy absorption rate (SAR) encourage optimization of the ratio of radiated power versus absorbed power in the user head. The patented PowerHelix antenna design significantly reduces the losses of current that can cause an incident magnetic field at the user’s skin. A specific ceramic is used that enables the manufacture of antennas which yield just five per cent of the radiation emitted by other systems.

Intel is combining new high dielectric ceramic and metal materials to build the insulating walls and switching gates of its 45 nanometer transistors. Transistors are tiny switches that process the ones and zeroes of the digital world. The gate turns the transistor on and off and the gate dielectric is an insulator underneath it that separates it from the channel where current flows.

Hundreds of millions of these microscopic transistors-or switches-will be inside the next generation of multi-core processors, resulting in record-breaking PC, laptop and server processor speeds. By replacing the conventional dielectric material with a thicker hafnium-based oxide material, transistor gate leakage is reduced by more than 10 times and transistors can be made smaller, increasing transistor density by approximately two times.

When the hafnium ceramic is combined with a compatible metal gate, the result is more than a 20 percent increase in drive current (higher transistor performance) and more than a five times reduction in source-drain leakage, thus improving the energy efficiency of the transistor. The smaller transistor size means active switching power is reduced by approximately 30 percent.

Date: 2023-04-10     hits: 332    Return