Microelectronics devices (microprocessors, memory chips) have obeyed Moore's Law for several decades – processing power doubles every 2 years. The vast majority of that improvement in processing power has occurred by shrinking the transistors in microprocessors to dimensions that are now less than 10 nm, and stacking memory bits to now more than 512 layers. This impressive performance in semiconductor fabrication has been made possible by plasma processing. Plasma etching and deposition has enabled high volume manufacturing (HVM) of modern microelectronics by economically adding and removing materials with atomic resolution. This performance in turn results from an impressive mastery of plasma transport, chemistry and plasma surface interactions. As the industry has matured, the need for computer modeling has increased. The vision of the industry is now a digital twin, a computer representation of the entire HVM process which encompasses nearly 800 steps to make a microprocessor. In this talk, an overview of plasma etching of semiconductors will be followed by examples of how modeling has impacted its development. The requirements and outlook for the digital twin will be discussed.
Biographical Information:
Mark J. Kushner is the William P. Allis Distinguished University Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Michigan, USA. He received the Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology, and was with Sandia National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Spectra Technology before joining the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1986 where he was the Founder Professor and served in several administrative roles. Prof. Kushner was Dean of Engineering and Melsa Professor at Iowa State University before joining UM in 2008 as founding director of the Michigan Institute for Plasma Science and Engineering. Prof. Kushner's research areas are low temperature plasmas and their applications. He has served on and chaired National Academies, Department of Defense and Department of Energy (DOE) policy studies, including the 2020 Decadal Report on Plasma Science. He directs the DOE Low Temperature Plasma Science Center. Prof. Kushner has received awards from the American Physical Society, IEEE and American Vacuum Society; and is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.
