Patent Grant
11862503
This application relates to the general field of Integrated Circuit (IC) devices and fabrication methods, and more particularly to multilayer or Three Dimensional Integrated Circuit (3D IC) devices and fabrication methods.
The invention may be directed to multilayer or Three Dimensional Integrated Circuit (3D IC) devices and fabrication methods.
In one aspect, a method for producing a 3D semiconductor device, the method including: providing a first level, said first level comprising a first single crystal layer; forming a first metal layer on top of said first level; forming a second metal layer on top of said first metal layer; forming at least one second level disposed on top of or above said second metal layer; performing a first lithography step on said second level; forming at least one third level disposed on top of or above said at least one second level; and then performing a second lithography step on said third level; performing additional processing steps to form a plurality of first memory cells within said at least one second level and a plurality of second memory cells within said at least one third level, wherein said additional processing steps comprise deposition processes and etch processes, wherein each of said plurality of first memory cells comprises at least one second transistor, wherein each of said plurality of second memory cells comprises at least one third transistor; and then performing at least one deposition step that simultaneously deposits gate electrodes on both said second transistors and said third transistors.
In another aspect, a method for producing a 3D semiconductor device, the method including: providing a first level, said first level comprising a first single crystal layer; forming a first metal layer on top of said first level; forming a second metal layer on top of said first metal layer; forming at least one second level disposed on top of or above said second metal layer; performing a first lithography step on said second level; forming at least one third level disposed on top of or above said at least one second level; and then performing a second lithography step on said third level; performing additional processing steps to form a plurality of first memory cells within said second level and a plurality of second memory cells within said third level, wherein said additional processing steps comprise deposition processes and etch processes, wherein each of said plurality of first memory cells comprises at least one second transistor, wherein each of said plurality of second memory cells comprises at least one third transistor; and then performing a deposition step that simultaneously deposits gate electrodes on both said at least one second transistors and said at least one third transistor.
In another aspect, a method for producing a 3D semiconductor device, the method including: providing a first level, the first level including a first single crystal layer; forming peripheral circuitry in and/or on the first level, where the peripheral circuitry includes first single crystal transistors; forming a first metal layer on top of the first level; forming a second metal layer on top of the first metal layer; forming at least one second level disposed on top of or above the second metal layer; performing a first lithography step; forming at least one third level disposed on top of or above the second level; performing a second lithography step; performing a first set of additional processing steps to form a plurality of first memory cells within the second level and a plurality of second memory cells within the third level, where each of the plurality of first memory cells includes at least one second transistor, and where each of the plurality of second memory cells includes at least one third transistor; and performing a deposition step to deposit a gate electrode for the at least one second transistor and the at least one third transistor, where the gate electrode includes metal.
Various embodiments of the invention will be understood and appreciated more fully from the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the drawings in which:
FIG. 29L1-FIG. 29L4 are exemplary drawing illustrations of a formation of top planar transistors;
Embodiments of the invention are described herein with reference to the drawing figures. Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the description and figures illustrate rather than limit the invention and that in general the figures are not drawn to scale for clarity of presentation. Such skilled persons will also realize that many more embodiments are possible by applying the inventive principles contained herein and that such embodiments fall within the scope of the invention which is not to be limited except by the appended claims.
Some drawing figures may describe process flows for building devices. These process flows, which may be a sequence of steps for building a device, may have many structures, numerals and labels that may be common between two or more adjacent steps. In such cases, some labels, numerals and structures used for a certain step's figure may have been described in the previous steps' figures.
Some embodiments of the invention may provide a new method for semiconductor device fabrication that may be highly desirable for custom products. Some embodiments of the invention may suggest the use of a re-programmable antifuse in conjunction with ‘Through Silicon Via’ to construct a new type of configurable logic, or as usually called, FPGA devices. Some embodiments of the invention may provide a solution to the challenge of high mask-set cost and low flexibility that exists in the current common methods of semiconductor fabrication. An additional illustrated advantage of some embodiments of the present invention may be that it could reduce the high cost of manufacturing the many different mask sets needed in order to provide a commercially viable logic family with a range of products each with a different set of master slices. Some embodiments of the invention may improve upon the prior art in many respects, including, for example, the structuring of the semiconductor device and methods related to the fabrication of semiconductor devices.
Some embodiments of the invention may reflect the motivation to save on the cost of masks with respect to the investment that would otherwise have been necessary to put in place a commercially viable set of master slices. Some embodiments of the invention may also provide the ability to incorporate various types of memory blocks in the configurable device. Some embodiments of the invention may provide a method to construct a configurable device with the desired amount of logic, memory, I/Os, and analog functions.
In addition, some embodiments of the invention may allow the use of repeating logic tiles that provide a continuous terrain of logic. Some embodiments of the invention may use a modular approach to construct various configurable systems with Through-Silicon-Via (TSV). Once a standard size and location of TSV has been defined one could build various configurable logic dies, configurable memory dies, configurable I/O dies and configurable analog dies which could be connected together to construct various configurable systems. In fact, these embodiments of the invention may allow mixing and matching among configurable dies, fixed function dies, and dies manufactured in different processes.
Moreover in accordance with an embodiment of the invention, the integrated circuit system may include an I/O die that may be fabricated utilizing a different process than the process utilized to fabricate the configurable logic die.
Further in accordance with an embodiment of the invention, the integrated circuit system may include at least two logic dies connected by the use of Through-Silicon-Via and wherein some of the Through-Silicon-Vias may be utilized to carry the system bus signal.
Additionally there is a growing need to reduce the impact of inter-chip interconnects. In fact, interconnects may be now dominating IC performance and power. One solution to shorten interconnect may be to use a 3D IC. Currently, the only known way for general logic 3D IC is to integrate finished device one on top of the other by utilizing Through-Silicon-Vias as now called TSVs. The problem with TSVs may be that their large size, usually a few microns each, may severely limit the number of connections that can be made. Some embodiments of the invention may provide multiple alternatives to constructing a 3D IC wherein many connections may be made less than one micron in size, thus enabling the use of 3D IC technology for most device applications.
Additionally some embodiments of the invention may offer new device alternatives by utilizing the proposed 3D IC technology
The device fabrication of the example shown in
Interconnection layer 806 could include multiple layers of long interconnection tracks for power distribution and clock networks, or a portion thereof, in addition to structures already fabricated in the first few layers, for example, logic fabric/first antifuse layer 804.
Second antifuse layer 807 could include many layers, including the antifuse configurable interconnection fabric. It might be called the short interconnection fabric, too. If metal 6 and metal 7 are used for the strips of this configurable interconnection fabric then the second antifuse may be embedded in the dielectric layer between metal 6 and metal 7.
The programming transistors and the other parts of the programming circuit could be fabricated afterward and be on top of the configurable interconnection fabric programming transistors 810. The programming element could be a thin film transistor or other alternatives for over oxide transistors as was mentioned previously. In such case the antifuse programming transistors may be placed over the antifuse layer, which may thereby enable the configurable interconnect in second antifuse layer 807 or logic fabric/first antifuse layer 804. It should be noted that in some cases it might be useful to construct part of the control logic for the second antifuse programming circuits, in the base layers such as silicon substrate 802 and logic fabric/first antifuse layer 804.
The final step may include constructing the connection to the outside 812. The connection could be pads for wire bonding, soldering balls for flip chip, optical, or other connection structures such as those connection structures for TSV.
In another alternative embodiment of the invention the antifuse programmable interconnect structure could be designed for multiple use. The same structure could be used as a part of the interconnection fabric, or as a part of the PLA logic cell, or as part of a Read Only Memory (ROM) function. In an FPGA product it might be desirable to have an element that could be used for multiple purposes. Having resources that could be used for multiple functions could increase the utility of the FPGA device.
The term layer transfer in the use herein may be defined as the technological process or method that enables the transfer of very fine layers of crystalline material onto a mechanical support, wherein the mechanical support may be another layer or substrate of crystalline material. For example, the “SmartCut” process, also used herein as the term ‘ion-cut’ process, together with wafer bonding technology, may enable a “Layer Transfer” whereby a thin layer of a single or mono-crystalline silicon wafer may be transferred from one wafer or substrate to another wafer or substrate. Other specific layer transfer processes may be described or referenced herein.
The terms monocrystalline or mono-crystalline in the use herein of, for example, monocrystalline or mono-crystalline layer, material, or silicon, may be defined as “a single crystal body of crystalline material that contains no large-angle boundaries or twin boundaries as in ASTM F1241, also called monocrystal” and “an arrangement of atoms in a solid that has perfect periodicity (that is, no defects)” as in the SEMATECH dictionary. The terms single crystal and monocrystal are equivalent in the SEMATECH dictionary. The term single crystal in the use herein of, for example, single crystal silicon layer, single crystal layer, may be equivalently defined as monocrystalline.
The term via in the use herein may be defined as “an opening in the dielectric layer(s) through which a riser passes, or in which the walls are made conductive; an area that provides an electrical pathway [connection path] from one metal layer to the metal layer above or below,” as in the SEMATECH dictionary. The term through silicon via (TSV) in the use herein may be defined as an opening in a silicon layer(s) through which an electrically conductive riser passes, and in which the walls are made isolative from the silicon layer; a riser that provides an electrical pathway [connection path] from one metal layer to the metal layer above or below. The term through layer via (TLV) in the use herein may be defined as an opening in a layer transferred layer(s) through which an electrically conductive riser passes, wherein the riser may pass through at least one isolating region, for example, a shallow trench isolation (STI) region in the transferred layer, may typically have a riser diameter of less than 200 nm, a riser that provides an electrical pathway [connection path] from one metal layer to the metal layer above or below. In some cases, a TLV may additionally pass thru an electrically conductive layer, and the walls may be made isolative from the conductive layer.
The reference 808 in subsequent figures can be any one of a vast number of combinations of possible preprocessed wafers or layers containing many combinations of transfer layers that fall within the scope of the invention. The term “preprocessed wafer or layer” may be generic and reference number 808 when used in a drawing figure to illustrate an embodiment of the present invention may represent many different preprocessed wafer or layer types including but not limited to underlying prefabricated layers, a lower layer interconnect wiring, a base layer, a substrate layer, a processed house wafer, an acceptor wafer, a logic house wafer, an acceptor wafer house, an acceptor substrate, target wafer, preprocessed circuitry, a preprocessed circuitry acceptor wafer, a base wafer layer, a lower layer, an underlying main wafer, a foundation layer, an attic layer, or a house wafer.
This layer transfer process can be repeated many times, thereby creating preprocessed wafers comprising many different transferred layers which, when combined, can then become preprocessed wafers or layers for future transfers. This layer transfer process may be sufficiently flexible that preprocessed wafers and transfer layers, if properly prepared, can be flipped over and processed on either side with further transfers in either direction as a matter of design choice.
The thinner the transferred layer, the smaller the through layer via (TLV) diameter obtainable, due to the potential limitations of manufacturable via aspect ratios. Thus, the transferred layer may be, for example, less than about 2 microns thick, less than about 1 micron thick, less than about 0.4 microns thick, less than about 200 nm thick, or less than about 100 nm thick. The TLV diameter may be less than about 400 nm, less than about 200 nm, less than about 80 nm, less than about 40 nm, or less than about 20 nm. The thickness of the layer or layers transferred according to some embodiments of the present invention may be designed as such to match and enable the best obtainable lithographic resolution capability of the manufacturing process employed to create the through layer vias or any other structures on the transferred layer or layers.
In many of the embodiments of the invention, the layer or layers transferred may be of a crystalline material, for example, mono-crystalline silicon, and after layer transfer, further processing, such as, for example, plasma/RIE or wet etching, may be done on the layer or layers that may create islands or mesas of the transferred layer or layers of crystalline material, for example, mono-crystalline silicon, the crystal orientation of which has not changed. Thus, a mono-crystalline layer or layers of a certain specific crystal orientation may be layer transferred and then processed whereby the resultant islands or mesas of mono-crystalline silicon have the same crystal specific orientation as the layer or layers before the processing. After this processing, the resultant islands or mesas of crystalline material, for example, mono-crystalline silicon, may be still referred to herein as a layer, for example, mono-crystalline layer, layer of mono-crystalline silicon, and so on.
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
A technology for such underlying circuitry may be to use the “SmartCut” process. The “SmartCut” process is a well understood technology used for fabrication of SOI wafers. The “SmartCut” process, together with wafer bonding technology, may enable a “Layer Transfer” whereby a thin layer of a single or mono-crystalline silicon wafer may be transferred from one wafer to another wafer. The “Layer Transfer” could be done at less than about 400° C. and the resultant transferred layer could be even less than about 100 nm thick. The transferred layer thickness may typically be about 100 nm, and may be a thin as about 5 nm in currently demonstrated fully depleted SOI (FDSOI) wafer manufacturing by Soitec. In most applications described herein in this invention the transferred layer thickness may be less than about 400 nm and may be less than about 200 nm for logic applications. The process with some variations and under different names may be commercially available by two companies, namely, Soitec (Crolles, France) and SiGen—Silicon Genesis Corporation (San Jose, CA). A room temperature wafer bonding process utilizing ion-beam preparation of the wafer surfaces in a vacuum has been recently demonstrated by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., Tokyo, Japan. This process may allow for room temperature layer transfer.
Alternatively, other technology may also be used. For example, other technologies may be utilized for layer transfer as described in, for example, IBM's layer transfer method shown at IEDM 2005 by A. W. Topol, et. al. The IBM's layer transfer method employs a SOI technology and utilizes glass handle wafers. The donor circuit may be high-temperature processed on an SOI wafer, temporarily bonded to a borosilicate glass handle wafer, backside thinned by chemical mechanical polishing of the silicon and then the Buried Oxide (BOX) is selectively etched off. The now thinned donor wafer may be subsequently aligned and low-temperature oxide-to-oxide bonded to the acceptor wafer topside. A low temperature release of the glass handle wafer from the thinned donor wafer may be performed, and then through bond via connections may be made. Additionally, epitaxial liftoff (ELO) technology as shown by P. Demeester, et. al, of IMEC in Semiconductor Science Technology 1993 may be utilized for layer transfer. ELO may make use of the selective removal of a very thin sacrificial layer between the substrate and the layer structure to be transferred. The to-be-transferred layer of GaAs or silicon may be adhesively ‘rolled’ up on a cylinder or removed from the substrate by utilizing a flexible carrier, such as, for example, black wax, to bow up the to-be-transferred layer structure when the selective etch, such as, for example, diluted Hydrofluoric (HF) Acid, may etch the exposed release layer, such as, for example, silicon oxide in SOI or AlAs. After liftoff, the transferred layer may then be aligned and bonded to the acceptor substrate or wafer. The manufacturability of the ELO process for multilayer layer transfer use was recently improved by J. Yoon, et. al., of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as described in Nature May 20, 2010. Canon developed a layer transfer technology called ELTRAN—Epitaxial Layer TRANsfer from porous silicon. ELTRAN may be utilized. The Electrochemical Society Meeting abstract No. 438 from year 2000 and the JSAP International July 2001 paper show a seed wafer being anodized in an HF/ethanol solution to create pores in the top layer of silicon, the pores may be treated with a low temperature oxidation and then high temperature hydrogen annealed to seal the pores. Epitaxial silicon may then be deposited on top of the porous silicon and then oxidized to form the SOI BOX. The seed wafer may be bonded to a handle wafer and the seed wafer may be split off by high pressure water directed at the porous silicon layer. The porous silicon may then be selectively etched off leaving a uniform silicon layer.
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
Now that a “layer transfer” process may be used to bond a thin mono-crystalline silicon layer transferred silicon layer 1404 on top of the preprocessed wafer 1402, a standard process could ensue to construct the rest of the desired circuits as illustrated in
An additional alternative embodiment of the invention is where the foundation wafer 1402 layer may be pre-processed to carry a plurality of back bias voltage generators. A known challenge in advanced semiconductor logic devices may be die-to-die and within-a-die parameter variations. Various sites within the die might have different electrical characteristics due to dopant variations and such. The parameters that can affect the variation may include the threshold voltage of the transistor. Threshold voltage variability across the die may be mainly due to channel dopant, gate dielectric, and critical dimension variability. This variation may become profound in sub 45 nm node devices. The usual implication may be that the design should be done for the worst case, resulting in a quite significant performance penalty. Alternatively complete new designs of devices are being proposed to solve this variability problem with significant uncertainty in yield and cost. A possible solution may be to use localized back bias to drive upward the performance of the worst zones and allow better overall performance with minimal additional power. The foundation-located back bias could also be used to minimize leakage due to process variation.
In another alternative the foundation substrate wafer 1402 could additionally carry SRAM cells as illustrated in
An additional embodiment may use TSVs in the foundation such as TSV 19B 10 to connect between wafers to form 3D Integrated Systems. In general each TSV may take a relatively large area, typically a few square microns. When the need is for many TSVs, the overall cost of the area for these TSVs might be high if the use of that area for high density transistors is substantially precluded. Pre-processing these TSVs on the donor wafer on a relatively older process line may significantly reduce the effective costs of the 3D TSV connections. The connection 1924 to the primary silicon circuitry, such as input logic 1920, could be then made at the minimum contact size of few tens of square nanometers, which may be two orders of magnitude lower than the few square microns needed by the TSVs. Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that
In
Alternatively the Foundation TSVs 19D22 could be used to pass the processor I/O and power to the heat spreader substrate 19D04 and to the interposer 19D06 while the DRAM stack would be coupled directly to the microprocessor active area 19D14. Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that many more combinations are possible within the scope of the disclosed embodiments illustrating the invention.
In yet another embodiment, custom SOI wafers may be used where NuVias 19F00 may be processed by the wafer supplier. NuVias 19F00 may be conventional TSVs that may be 1 micron or larger in diameter and may be preprocessed by an SOI wafer vendor. This is illustrated in
A process flow as illustrated in
There may be a few alternative methods to construct the top transistors precisely aligned to the underlying pre-fabricated layers such as pre-processed wafer or layer 808, utilizing “SmartCut” layer transfer and not exceeding the temperature limit, typically about 400° C., of the underlying pre-fabricated structure, which may include low melting temperature metals or other construction materials such as, for example, aluminum or copper. As the layer transfer may be less than about 200 nm thick, then the transistors defined on it could be aligned precisely to the top metal layer of the pre-processed wafer or layer 808 as may be needed and those transistors may have state of the art layer to layer misalignment capability, for example, less than about 40 nm misalignment or less than about 4 nm misalignment, as well as through layer via, or layer to layer metal connection, diameters of less than about 50 nm, or even less than about 20 nm. The thinner the transferred layer, the smaller the through layer via diameter obtainable, due to the potential limitations of manufacturable via aspect ratios. The transferred layer may be, for example, less than about 2 microns thick, less than about 1 micron thick, less than about 0.4 microns thick, less than about 200 nm thick, or less than about 100 nm thick.
One alternative method may be to have a thin layer transfer of single crystal silicon which will be used for epitaxial Ge crystal growth using the transferred layer as the seed for the germanium. Another alternative method may be to use the thin layer transfer of mono-crystalline silicon for epitaxial growth of GexSi1-x. The percent Ge in Silicon of such layer may be determined by the transistor specifications of the circuitry. Prior art have presented approaches whereby the base silicon may be used to crystallize the germanium on top of the oxide by using holes in the oxide to drive crystal or lattice seeding from the underlying silicon crystal. However, it may be very hard to do such on top of multiple interconnection layers. By using layer transfer a mono-crystalline layer of silicon crystal may be constructed on top, allowing a relatively easy process to seed and crystallize an overlying germanium layer. Amorphous germanium could be conformally deposited by CVD at about 300° C. and a pattern may be aligned to the underlying layer, such as the pre-processed wafer or layer 808, and then encapsulated by a low temperature oxide. A short microsecond-duration heat pulse may melt the Ge layer while keeping the underlying structure below about 400° C. The Ge/Si interface may start the crystal or lattice epitaxial growth to crystallize the germanium or GexSi1-x layer. Then implants may be made to form Ge transistors and activated by laser pulses without damaging the underlying structure taking advantage of the low activation temperature of dopants in germanium.
Finally a thick oxide 22G02 may be deposited and contact openings may be masked and etched preparing the transistors to be connected as illustrated in
According to some embodiments of the invention, during a normal fabrication of the device layers as illustrated in
The term alignment mark in the use herein may be defined as “an image selectively placed within or outside an array for either testing or aligning, or both [ASTM F127-84], also called alignment key and alignment target,” as in the SEMATECH dictionary. The alignment mark may, for example, be within a layer, wafer, or substrate of material processing or to be processed, and/or may be on a photomask or photoresist image, or may be a calculated position within, for example, a lithographic wafer stepper's software or memory.
An additional aspect of this technique for forming top transistors may be the size of the via, or TLV, used to connect the top transistors 22G20 to the metal layers in pre-processed wafer and layer 808 underneath. The general rule of thumb may be that the size of a via should be larger than one tenth the thickness of the layer that the via is going through. Since the thickness of the layers in the structures presented in
Another alternative for forming the planar top transistors with source and drain extensions may be to process the prepared wafer of
Alternatively, a high-k metal gate (HKMG) structure may be formed as follows. Following an industry standard HF/SC1/SC2 cleaning to create an atomically smooth surface, a high-k gate dielectric 29E02 may be deposited. The semiconductor industry has chosen Hafnium-based dielectrics as the leading material of choice to replace SiO2 and Silicon oxynitride. The Hafnium-based family of dielectrics includes hafnium oxide and hafnium silicate/hafnium silicon oxynitride. Hafnium oxide, HfO2, has a dielectric constant twice as much as that of hafnium silicate/hafnium silicon oxynitride (HfSiO/HfSiON k˜15). The choice of the metal may affect proper device performance. A metal replacing N+ poly as the gate electrode may need to have a work function of about 4.2 eV for the device to operate properly and at the right threshold voltage. Alternatively, a metal replacing P+ poly as the gate electrode may need to have a work function of about 5.2 eV to operate properly. The TiAl and TiAlN based family of metals, for example, could be used to tune the work function of the metal from about 4.2 eV to about 5.2 eV.
Finally a thick oxide 29G02 may be deposited and contact openings may be masked and etched preparing the transistors to be connected, for example, as illustrated in
Another class of devices that may be constructed partly at high temperature before layer transfer to a substrate with metal interconnects and may then be completed at low temperature after a layer transfer may be a junction-less transistor (JLT). For example, in deep sub-micron processes copper metallization may be utilized, so a high temperature would be above about 400° C., whereby a low temperature would be about 400° C. and below. The junction-less transistor structure may avoid the sharply graded junctions that may be needed as silicon technology scales, and may provide the ability to have a thicker gate oxide for an equivalent performance when compared to a traditional MOSFET transistor. The junction-less transistor may also be known as a nanowire transistor without junctions, or gated resistor, or nanowire transistor as described in a paper by Jean-Pierre Colinge, et. al., published in Nature Nanotechnology on Feb. 21, 2010. The junction-less transistors may be constructed whereby the transistor channel is a thin solid piece of evenly and heavily doped single crystal silicon. The doping concentration of the channel may be identical to that of the source and drain. The considerations may include that the nanowire channel be thin and narrow enough to allow for full depletion of the carriers when the device is turned off, and the channel doping be high enough to allow a reasonable current to flow when the device is on. These considerations may lead to tight process variation boundaries for channel thickness, width, and doping for a reasonably obtainable gate work function and gate oxide thickness.
One of the challenges of a junction-less transistor device is turning the channel off with minimal leakage at a zero gate bias. As an embodiment of the invention, to enhance gate control over the transistor channel, the channel may be doped unevenly; whereby the heaviest doping may be closest to the gate or gates and the channel doping may be lighter the farther away from the gate electrode. One example may be where the center of a 2, 3, or 4 gate sided junction-less transistor channel is more lightly doped than the edges towards the gates. This may enable much lower off currents for the same gate work function and control.
The junction-less transistor channel may be constructed with even, graded, or discrete layers of doping. The channel may be constructed with materials other than doped mono-crystalline silicon, such as poly-crystalline silicon, or other semi-conducting, insulating, or conducting material, such as graphene or other graphitic material, and may be in combination with other layers of similar or different material. For example, the center of the channel may include a layer of oxide, or of lightly doped silicon, and the edges towards the gates more heavily doped single crystal silicon. This may enhance the gate control effectiveness for the off state of the junction-less transistor, and may also increase the on-current due to strain effects on the other layer or layers in the channel. Strain techniques may also be employed from covering and insulator material above, below, and surrounding the transistor channel and gate. Lattice modifiers may also be employed to strain the silicon, such as an embedded SiGe implantation and anneal. The cross section of the transistor channel may be rectangular, circular, or oval shaped, to enhance the gate control of the channel. Alternatively, to optimize the mobility of the P-channel junction-less transistor in the 3D layer transfer method, the donor wafer may be rotated 90 degrees with respect to the acceptor wafer prior to bonding to facilitate the creation of the P-channel in the <110> silicon plane direction.
To construct an n-type 4-sided gated junction-less transistor a silicon wafer may be preprocessed to be used for layer transfer as illustrated in
Alternatively, the wafer that becomes the bottom wafer in
As illustrated in
In
The contacts may be masked and etched. The gate contact 5632 may be masked and etched, so that the contact etches through the top gate 5630 layer, and during the metal opening mask and etch process the gate oxide may be etched and the top gate 5630 and bottom gate 5618 gates may be connected together. The contacts 5634 to the two terminals of the resistor 5614 may be masked and etched. And then the through vias 5636 to the house wafer 808 and metal interconnect strip 5622 may be masked and etched.
As illustrated in
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Contacts to the 4-sided gated JLT's source, drain, and gate may be made with conventional Back end of Line (BEOL) processing as described previously and coupling from the formed JLTs to the acceptor wafer may be accomplished with formation of a through layer via (TLV) connection to an acceptor wafer metal interconnect pad. This flow may enable the formation of a mono-crystalline silicon channel 4-sided gated junction-less transistor that may be formed and connected to the underlying multi-metal layer semiconductor device without exposing the underlying devices to a high temperature.
A p channel 4-sided gated JLT may be constructed as above with the N+ silicon layers 9602 and 9608 formed as P+ doped, and the metals/materials of gate electrode 9612 may be of appropriate work function to shutoff the p channel at a gate voltage of zero.
While the process flow shown in
Alternatively, an n-type 3-sided gated junction-less transistor may be constructed as illustrated in
A thin oxide may be grown to protect the thin transistor silicon 5704 layer top, and then the transistor channel elements 5708 may be masked and etched as illustrated in
Then deposition of a low temperature gate material 5712, such as doped or undoped amorphous silicon as illustrated in
Then the entire structure may be covered with a Low Temperature Oxide 5716, the oxide planarized with chemical mechanical polishing, and then contacts and metal interconnects may be masked and etched as illustrated
Alternatively, an n-type 3-sided gated thin-side-up junction-less transistor may be constructed as follows in
The transistor channel elements 5808 may be masked and etched as illustrated in
Alternatively, a 1-sided gated junction-less transistor can be constructed as shown in
A family of vertical devices can also be constructed as top transistors that are precisely aligned to the underlying pre-fabricated acceptor wafer or house 808. These vertical devices have implanted and annealed single crystal silicon layers in the transistor by utilizing the “SmartCut” layer transfer process that may not exceed the temperature limit of the underlying pre-fabricated structure. For example, vertical style MOSFET transistors, floating gate flash transistors, floating body DRAM, thyristor, bipolar, and Schottky gated JFET transistors, as well as memory devices, can be constructed. Junction-less transistors may also be constructed in a similar manner. The gates of the vertical transistors or resistors may be controlled by memory or logic elements such as MOSFET, DRAM, SRAM, floating flash, anti-fuse, floating body devices, etc. that are in layers above or below the vertical device, or in the same layer. As an example, a vertical gate-all-around n-MOSFET transistor construction is described below.
The donor wafer preprocessed for the general layer transfer process is illustrated in
As shown in
Additionally, a vertical gate all around junction-less transistor may be constructed as illustrated in at least
The acceptor wafer or house 808 may also be prepared with an oxide pre-clean and deposition of a conductive barrier layer 5416 and Al and Ge layers to form a Ge—Al eutectic bond, Al—Ge eutectic layer 5414, during a thermo-compressive wafer to wafer bonding as part of the layer-transfer-flow, thereby transferring the pre-processed single crystal silicon of
Recessed Channel Array Transistors (RCATs) may be another transistor family that can utilize layer transfer and etch definition to constmct a low-temperature monolithic 3D Integrated Circuit. The recessed channel array transistor may sometimes be referred to as a recessed channel transistor. Two types of RCAT device structures are shown in
A layer stacking approach to construct 3D integrated circuits with standard RCATs is illustrated in
An oxide layer 6701 may be grown or deposited, as illustrated in
A layer transfer process may be conducted to attach the donor wafer in
After the cut, chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) may be performed. Oxide isolation regions 6705 may be formed and an etch process may be conducted to form the recessed channel 6706 as illustrated in
A gate dielectric 6707 may then be deposited, either through atomic layer deposition or through other low-temperature oxide formation procedures described previously. A metal gate 6708 may then be deposited to fill the recessed channel, followed by a CMP and gate patterning as illustrated in
A low temperature oxide 6709 may be deposited and planarized by CMP. Contacts 6710 may be formed to connect to all electrodes of the transistor as illustrated in
A planar n-channel junction-less recessed channel array transistor (JLRCAT) suitable for a 3D IC may be constructed. The JLRCAT may provide an improved source and drain contact resistance, thereby allowing for lower channel doping, and the recessed channel may provide for more flexibility in the engineering of channel lengths and characteristics, and increased immunity from process variations.
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Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
An n-channel Trench MOSFET transistor suitable for a 3D IC may be constructed. The trench MOSFET may provide an improved drive current and the channel length can be tuned without area penalty. The trench MOSFET can be formed utilizing layer transfer techniques.
3D memory device structures may also be constructed in layers of mono-crystalline silicon and utilize the pre-processing of a donor wafer by forming wafer sized layers of various materials without a process temperature restriction, then layer transferring the pre-processed donor wafer to the acceptor wafer, followed by some example processing steps, and repeating this procedure multiple times, and then processing with either low temperature (below about 400° C.) or high temperature (greater than about 400° C.) after the final layer transfer to form memory device structures, such as, for example, transistors or memory bit cells, on or in the multiple transferred layers that may be physically aligned and may be electrically coupled to the acceptor wafer. The term memory cells may also describe memory bit cells in this document.
Novel monolithic 3D Dynamic Random Access Memories (DRAMs) may be constructed in the above manner. Some embodiments of this present invention utilize the floating body DRAM type.
Floating-body DRAM may be a next generation DRAM being developed by many companies such as Innovative Silicon, Hynix, and Toshiba. These floating-body DRAMs store data as charge in the floating body of an SOI MOSFET or a multi-gate MOSFET. Further details of a floating body DRAM and its operation modes can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,541,616, 7,514,748, 7,499,358, 7,499,352, 7,492,632, 7,486,563, 7,477,540, and 7,476,939, besides other literature. A monolithic 3D integrated DRAM can be constructed with floating-body transistors. Prior art for constructing monolithic 3D DRAMs used planar transistors where crystalline silicon layers were formed with either selective epi technology or laser recrystallization. Both selective epi technology and laser recrystallization may not provide perfectly single crystal silicon and often require a high thermal budget. A description of these processes is given in Chapter 13 of the book entitled “Integrated Interconnect Technologies for 3D Nanoelectronic Systems” by Bakir and Meindl.
A floating-body DRAM has thus been constructed, with (1) horizontally-oriented transistors, (2) some of the memory cell control lines, e.g., source-lines SL, constructed of heavily doped silicon and embedded in the memory cell layer, (3) side gates simultaneously deposited over multiple memory layers and independently addressable, and (4) monocrystalline (or single-crystal) silicon layers obtained by layer transfer techniques such as ion-cut. WL wires 22703 need not be on the top layer of the peripheral circuits 22702, they may be integrated. WL wires 22703 may be constructed of another high temperature resistant material, such as NiCr.
Novel monolithic 3D memory technologies utilizing material resistance changes may be constructed in a similar manner. There may be many types of resistance-based memories including phase change memory, Metal Oxide memory, resistive RAM (RRAM), memristors, solid-electrolyte memory, ferroelectric RAM, MRAM, etc. Background information on these resistive-memory types may be given in “Overview of candidate device technologies for storage-class memory,” IBM Journal of Research and Development, vol. 52, no. 4.5, pp. 449-464, July 2008 by Burr, G. W., et. al. The contents of this document are incorporated in this specification by reference.
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The above flow may enable the formation of a resistance-based 3D memory with one additional masking step per memory layer constructed by layer transfers of wafer sized doped mono-crystalline silicon layers and may be connected to an underlying multi-metal layer semiconductor device.
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
Charge trap NAND (Negated AND) memory devices may be another form of popular commercial non-volatile memories. Charge trap device may store their charge in a charge trap layer, wherein this charge trap layer then may influence the channel of a transistor. Background information on charge-trap memory can be found in “Integrated Interconnect Technologies for 3D Nanoelectronic Systems”, Chapter 13, Artech House, 2009 by Bakir and Meindl (hereinafter Bakir), “A Highly Scalable 8-Layer 3D Vertical-Gate (VG) TFT NAND Flash Using Junction-Free Buried Channel BE-SONOS Device,” Symposium on VLSI Technology, 2010 by Hang-Ting Lue, et al. and “Introduction to Flash memory,” Proc. IEEE 91, 489-502 (2003) by R. Bez, et al. Work described in Bakir utilized selective epitaxy, laser recrystallization, or polysilicon to form the transistor channel, which can result in less than satisfactory transistor performance. The architectures shown in
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This flow may enable the formation of a charge trap based 3D memory with zero additional masking steps per memory layer constructed by layer transfers of wafer sized doped layers of mono-crystalline silicon and this 3D memory may be connected to an underlying multi-metal layer semiconductor device.
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
Floating gate (FG) memory devices may be another form of popular commercial non-volatile memories. Floating gate devices may store their charge in a conductive gate (FG) that may be nominally isolated from unintentional electric fields, wherein the charge on the FG then influences the channel of a transistor. Background information on floating gate flash memory can be found in “Introduction to Flash memory”, Proc. IEEE 91, 489-502 (2003) by R. Bez, et al. The architectures shown in
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This flow may enable the formation of a floating gate based 3D memory with two additional masking steps per memory layer constructed by layer transfers of wafer sized doped layers of mono-crystalline silicon and this 3D memory may be connected to an underlying multi-metal layer semiconductor device.
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This flow may enable the formation of a floating gate based 3D memory with one additional masking step per memory layer constructed by layer transfer of wafer sized doped layers of mono-crystalline silicon and this 3D memory may be connected to an underlying multi-metal layer semiconductor device.
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
It may be desirable to place the peripheral circuits for functions such as, for example, memory control, on the same mono-crystalline silicon or polysilicon layer as the memory elements or string rather than reside on a mono-crystalline silicon or polysilicon layer above or below the memory elements or string on a 3D IC memory chip. However, that memory layer substrate thickness or doping may preclude proper operation of the peripheral circuits as the memory layer substrate thickness or doping provides a fully depleted transistor channel and junction structure, such as, for example, FD-SOI. Moreover, for a 2D IC memory chip constructed on, for example, an FD-SOI substrate, wherein the peripheral circuits for functions such as, for example, memory control, must reside and properly function in the same semiconductor layer as the memory element, a fully depleted transistor channel and junction structure may preclude proper operation of the periphery circuitry, but may provide many benefits to the memory element operation and reliability. Also, the NAND string source-drain regions may be formed separately from the select and periphery transistors. Furthermore, persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the process steps and concepts of forming regions of thicker silicon for the memory periphery circuits may be applied to many memory types, such as, for example, charge trap, resistive change, DRAM, SRAM, and floating body DRAM.
The monolithic 3D integration concepts described in this patent application can lead to novel embodiments of poly-crystalline silicon based memory architectures. While the following concepts in
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A silicon oxide layer 11032 may be deposited or grown on top of silicon substrate 11002.
A layer of N+ doped poly-crystalline or amorphous silicon (not shown) may be deposited. The N+ doped poly-crystalline or amorphous silicon layer may be deposited using a chemical vapor deposition process, such as LPCVD or PECVD, or other process methods, and may be deposited doped with N+ dopants, such as, for example, Arsenic or Phosphorous, or may be deposited un-doped and subsequently doped with, such as, for example, ion implantation or PLAD (PLasma Assisted Doping) techniques. Silicon Oxide may then be deposited or grown (not shown). This oxide may now form the first Si/SiO2 layer comprised of N+ doped poly-crystalline or amorphous silicon layer and silicon oxide layer.
Additional Si/SiO2 layers, such as, for example, second Si/SiO2 layer and third Si/SiO2 layer, may each be formed. Oxide layer may be deposited to electrically isolate the top N+ doped poly-crystalline or amorphous silicon layer.
A Rapid Thermal Anneal (RTA) or flash anneal may be conducted to crystallize the N+ doped poly-crystalline silicon or amorphous silicon layers of first Si/SiO2 layer, second Si/SiO2 layer, and third Si/SiO2 layer, forming crystallized N+ silicon layers. Alternatively, an optical anneal, such as, for example, a laser anneal, could be performed alone or in combination with the RTA or other annealing processes. Temperatures during this step could be as high as about 700° C., and could even be as high as, for example, 1400° C. Since there may be no circuits or metallization underlying these layers of crystallized N+ silicon, very high temperatures (such as, for example, 1400° C.) can be used for the anneal process, leading to very good quality poly-crystalline silicon with few grain boundaries and very high carrier mobilities approaching those of mono-crystalline crystal silicon.
Oxide layer, third Si/SiO2 layer, second Si/SiO2 layer and first Si/SiO2 layer may be lithographically defined and plasma/RIE etched to form a portion of the memory cell structure, which may now include multiple layers of regions of crystallized N+ silicon 11026 (previously crystallized N+ silicon layers) and oxide 10032. Thus, these transistor elements or portions may have been defined by a common lithography step, which also may be described as a single lithography step, same lithography step, or one lithography step.
A gate dielectric and gate electrode material may be deposited, planarized with a chemical mechanical polish (CMP), and then lithographically defined and plasma/RIE etched to form gate dielectric regions 11028 which may either be self-aligned to and covered by gate electrodes 11030 (shown), or cover the entire crystallized N+ silicon regions and oxide regions multi-layer structure. The gate stack including gate electrode and gate dielectric regions may be formed with a gate dielectric, such as thermal oxide, and a gate electrode material, such as poly-crystalline silicon. Alternatively, the gate dielectric may be an atomic layer deposited (ALD) material that may be paired with a work function specific gate metal according to industry standard high k metal gate process schemes described previously. Additionally, the gate dielectric may be formed with a rapid thermal oxidation (RTO), a low temperature oxide deposition or low temperature microwave plasma oxidation of the silicon surfaces and then a gate electrode such as tungsten or aluminum may be deposited.
The entire structure may be covered with a gap fill oxide, which may be planarized with chemical mechanical polishing.
Bit-line (BL) contacts, not shown for clarity, may be lithographically defined, etched with, for example, plasma/RIE, through oxide 11032, the three crystallized N+ silicon regions 11026, and the associated oxide vertical isolation regions 11022 to connect substantially all memory layers vertically. BL contacts may then be processed by a photoresist removal. Resistance change material 11038, such as hafnium oxides or titanium oxides, may then be deposited, for example, with atomic layer deposition (ALD). The electrode for the resistance change memory element may then be deposited by ALD to form the electrode/BL contact. The excess deposited material may be polished to planarity at or below the top of oxide. Each BL contact with resistive change material may be shared among substantially all layers of memory.
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This flow may enable the formation of a resistance-based multi-layer or 3D memory array with zero additional masking steps per memory layer, which may utilize poly-crystalline silicon junction-less transistors and may have a resistance-based memory element in series with a select transistor, and may be constructed by layer transfers of wafer sized doped poly-crystalline silicon layers, and this 3D memory array may be connected to an overlying multi-metal layer semiconductor device or periphery circuitry.
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
An alternative embodiment of this present invention may be a monolithic 3D DRAM we call NuDRAM. It may utilize layer transfer and cleaving methods described in this document. It may provide high-quality single crystal silicon at low effective thermal budget, leading to considerable advantage over prior art.
An illustration of a NuDRAM constructed with partially depleted SOI transistors is given in
An alternative method whereby to build both ‘n’ type and ‘p’ type transistors on the same layer may be to partially process the first phase of transistor formation on the donor wafer with normal CMOS processing including a ‘dummy gate’, a process known as gate-last transistors or process, or gate replacement transistors or process, or replacement gate transistors or process. In some embodiments of the invention, a layer transfer of the mono-crystalline silicon may be performed after the dummy gate is completed and before the formation of a replacement gate. Processing prior to layer transfer may have no temperature restrictions and the processing during and after layer transfer may be limited to low temperatures, generally, for example, below about 400° C. The dummy gate and the replacement gate may include various materials such as silicon and silicon dioxide, or metal and low k materials such as TiALN and HfO2. An example may be the high-k metal gate (HKMG) CMOS transistors that have been developed for the 45 nm, 32 nm, 22 nm, and future CMOS generations. Intel and TSMC may have shown the advantages of a ‘gate-last’ approach to construct high performance HKMG CMOS transistors (C, Auth et al., VLSI 2008, pp 128-129 and C. H. Jan et al, 2009 IEDM p. 647).
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The donor wafer 7000 may be now temporarily bonded to carrier substrate 7014 at interface 7016 as illustrated in
The donor wafer 7000 may then be cleaved at the cleave plane 7012 and may be thinned by chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) so that the transistor isolation 7002 may be exposed at the donor layer face 7018 as illustrated in
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A low temperature (for example, less than about 400° C.) layer transfer flow may be performed, as illustrated in
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The bonded combination of acceptor wafer 808 and HKMG transistor silicon layer 7001 may now be ready for normal state of the art gate-last transistor formation completion. As illustrated in
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Alternatively, the carrier substrate 7014 may be a silicon wafer, and infra-red light and optics could be utilized for alignments.
An illustrative alternative may be available when using the carrier wafer flow. In this flow we can use the two sides of the transferred layer to build NMOS on one side and PMOS on the other side. Proper timing of the replacement gate step in such a flow could enable full performance transistors properly aligned to each other. Compact 3D library cells may be constructed from this process flow.
FIG. 29L1 is a drawing illustration of the generic cell 83L00 which may be customized by custom NMOS transistor contacts 83L22, 83L24 and custom metal 83L26 to form a double inverter. The Vss power line 83L25 may run on top of the NMOS transistors.
FIG. 29L2 is a drawing illustration of the generic cell 83L00 which may be customized to a NOR function, FIG. 29L3 is a drawing illustration of the generic cell 83L00 which may be customized to a NAND function and FIG. 29L4 is a drawing illustration of the generic cell 83L00 which may be customized to a multiplexer function. Accordingly generic cell 83L00 could be customized to substantially provide the logic functions, such as, for example, NAND and NOR functions, so a generic gate array using array of generic cells 83L00 could be customized with custom contacts vias and metal layers to any logic function. Thus, the NMOS, or n-type, transistors may be formed on one layer and the PMOS, or p-type, transistors may be formed on another layer, and connection paths may be formed between the n-type and p-type transistors to create Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) logic cells. Additionally, the n-type and p-type transistors layers may reside on the first, second, third, or any other of a number of layers in the 3D structure, substantially overlaying the other layer, and any other previously constructed layer.
Another alternative, with reference to
The above flows, whether single type transistor donor wafer or complementary type transistor donor wafer, could be repeated multiple times to build a multi-level 3D monolithic integrated system. These flows could also provide a mix of device technologies in a monolithic 3D manner. For example, device I/O or analog circuitry such as, for example, phase-locked loops (PLL), clock distribution, or RF circuits could be integrated with CMOS logic circuits via layer transfer, or bipolar circuits could be integrated with CMOS logic circuits, or analog devices could be integrated with logic, and so on. Prior art shows alternative technologies of constructing 3D devices. The most common technologies are, either using thin film transistors (TFT) to construct a monolithic 3D device, or stacking prefabricated wafers and then using a through silicon via (TSV) to connect the prefabricated wafers. The TFT approach may be limited by the performance of thin film transistors while the stacking approach may be limited by the relatively large lateral size of the TSV via (on the order of a few microns) due to the relatively large thickness of the 3D layer (about 60 microns) and accordingly the relatively low density of the through silicon vias connecting them. According to many embodiments of the present invention that construct 3D IC based on layer transfer techniques, the transferred layer may be a thin layer of less than about 0.4 micron. This 3D IC with transferred layer according to some embodiments of the present invention may be in sharp contrast to TSV based 3D ICs in the prior art where the layers connected by TSV may be more than 5 microns thick and in most cases more than 50 microns thick.
The alternative process flows presented may provide true monolithic 3D integrated circuits. It may allow the use of layers of single crystal silicon transistors with the ability to have the upper transistors aligned to the underlying circuits as well as those layers aligned each to other and only limited by the Stepper capabilities. Similarly the contact pitch between the upper transistors and the underlying circuits may be compatible with the contact pitch of the underlying layers. While in the best current stacking approach the stack wafers are a few microns thick, the alternative process flows presented may suggest very thin layers of typically 100 nm, but recent work has demonstrated layers about 20 nm thin.
Accordingly the presented alternatives allow for true monolithic 3D devices. This monolithic 3D technology may provide the ability to integrate with full density, and to be scaled to tighter features, at the same pace as the semiconductor industry.
Additionally, true monolithic 3D devices may allow the formation of various sub-circuit structures in a spatially efficient configuration with higher performance than 2D equivalent structures. Illustrated below are some examples of how a 3D ‘library’ of cells may be constructed in the true monolithic 3D fashion.
Another compact 3D library may be constructed whereby one or more layers of metal interconnect may be allowed between the NMOS and PMOS devices and one or more of the devices may be constructed vertically.
A compact 3D CMOS 8 Input NAND cell may be constructed as illustrated in
The topside view of the 3D NAND-8 cell, with no metal shown and with horizontal NMOS and PMOS devices, is illustrated in
Accordingly a CMOS circuit may be constructed where the various circuit cells may be built on two silicon layers achieving a smaller circuit area and shorter intra and inter transistor interconnects. As interconnects may become dominating for power and speed, packing circuits in a smaller area would result in a lower power and faster speed end device.
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that a number of different process flows have been described with exemplary logic gates and memory bit cells used as representative circuits. Such skilled persons will further appreciate that whichever flow is chosen for an individual design, a library of all the logic functions for use in the design may be created so that the cells may easily be reused either within that individual design or in subsequent ones employing the same flow. Such skilled persons will also appreciate that many different design styles may be used for a given design. For example, a library of logic cells could be built in a manner that has uniform height called standard cells as is well known in the art. Alternatively, a library could be created for use in long continuous strips of transistors called a gated array which is also known in the art. In another alternative embodiment, a library of cells could be created for use in a hand crafted or custom design as is well known in the art. For example, in yet another alternative embodiment, any combination of libraries of logic cells tailored to these design approaches can be used in a particular design as a matter of design choice, the libraries chosen may employ the same process flow if they are to be used on the same layers of a 3D IC. Different flows may be used on different levels of a 3D IC, and one or more libraries of cells appropriate for each respective level may be used in a single design.
Also known in the art are computer program products that may be stored in computer readable media for use in data processing systems employed to automate the design process, more commonly known as computer aided design (CAD) software. Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate the advantages of designing the cell libraries in a manner compatible with the use of CAD software.
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will realize that libraries of I/O cells, analog function cells, complete memory blocks of various types, and other circuits may also be created for one or more processing flows to be used in a design and that such libraries may also be made compatible with CAD software. Many other uses and embodiments will suggest themselves to such skilled persons after reading this specification, thus the scope of the illustrated embodiments of the invention is to be limited only by the appended claims.
Additionally, when circuit cells are built on two or more layers of thin silicon as shown above, and enjoy the dense vertical through silicon via interconnections, the metallization layer scheme to take advantage of this dense 3D technology may be improved as follows.
The metallization layer scheme may be improved for 3D circuits as illustrated in
When a transferred layer is not optically transparent to shorter wavelength light, and hence not able to detect alignment marks and images to a nanometer or tens of nanometer resolution, due to the transferred layer or its carrier or holder substrate's thickness, infra-red (IR) optics and imaging may be utilized for alignment purposes. However, the resolution and alignment capability may not be satisfactory. In some embodiments of the present invention, alignment windows may be created that allow use of the shorter wavelength light, for example, for alignment purposes during layer transfer flows.
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Both the donor wafer 11100 and the acceptor wafer 11110 bonding surfaces 11101 and 11111 may be prepared for wafer bonding by depositions, polishes, plasma, or wet chemistry treatments to facilitate successful wafer to wafer bonding.
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Additionally, when monolithically stacking multiple layers of transistors and circuitry, there may be a practical limit on how many layers can be effectively stacked. For example, the processing time in the wafer fabrication facility may be too long or yield too risky for a stack of 8 layers, and yet it may be acceptable for creating 4 layer stacks. It therefore may be desirable to create two 4 layer sub-stacks, that may be tested and error or yield corrected with, for example, redundancy schemes described elsewhere in the document, and then stack the two 4-layer sub-stacks to create the desired 8-layer 3D IC stack. The sub-stack transferred layer and substrate or carrier substrate may not be optically transparent to shorter wavelength light, and hence not able to detect alignment marks and images to a nanometer or tens of nanometer resolution, due to the transferred layer or its carrier or holder substrate's thickness or material composition. Infra-red (IR) optics and imaging may be utilized for alignment purposes. However, the resolution and alignment capability may not be satisfactory. In some embodiments of the present invention, alignment windows may be created that allow use of the shorter wavelengths of light for alignment purposes during layer transfer flows or traditional through silicon via (TSV) flows as a method to stack and electrically couple the sub-stacks.
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Acceptor wafer 15410 may be a preprocessed wafer with multiple layers of monolithically stacked transistors and circuitry sub-stack 15405. Acceptor wafer 15410 metal connect pads or strips 15480 and acceptor wafer alignment marks 15490 are shown and may be formed in the top device layer of the multiple layers of monolithically stacked transistors and circuitry sub-stack 15405 (shown), or may be formed in any of the other layers of multiple layers of monolithically stacked transistors and circuitry sub-stack 15405 (not shown), or may be formed in the substrate portion of the acceptor wafer 15410 (not shown).
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Both the carrier substrate 15485 with donor wafer sub-stack multiple layers of monolithically stacked transistors and circuitry sub-stack 15402 and the acceptor wafer 15410 bonding surfaces, donor wafer bonding surface 15481 and acceptor bonding surface 15411, may be prepared for wafer bonding by depositions, polishes, plasma, or wet chemistry treatments to facilitate successful wafer to wafer bonding.
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Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
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To accomplish electrical connections between the acceptor wafer and the donor wafer the acceptor wafer may have on its top surface connection pads, which may include, for example, copper or aluminum, which will be called bottom-pads. The bottom surface of the donor wafer transferred layer may also have connection pads, which may include, for example, copper or aluminum, which will be called upper-pads. The bottom-pads and upper-pads may be placed one on top of the other to form electrical connections. If the bottom-pads and upper-pads are constructed large enough, then the wafer to wafer bonding misalignment may not limit the ability to connect. And accordingly, for example, for a 1 micrometer misalignment, the connectivity limit would be on the order of one connection per 1 micron square with bottom-pads and upper-pads sizes on the order of 1 micrometer on a side. The following alternative of the invention would allow much higher vertical connectivity than the wafer to wafer bonding misalignment limits. The planning of these connection pads need to be such that regardless of the misalignment (within a given maximum limit, for example, 1 micrometer) all the desired connections would be made, while avoiding forming shorts between two active independent connection paths.
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It may be appreciated that for any misalignment in North-Sought and in West-East direction that is within the misalignment range, there will at least one of the upper-pads in the set (upper-pads 15504 or upper-pads 15505) that may come in substantially full contact with their corresponding bottom-pad 15502. If upper-pads 15504 fall in the space between bottom-pads 15502, then upper-pads 15505 would be in substantially full contact with a bottom pad 155002, and vice-versa.
The layout structure of connections illustrated in
Such a pad structure as illustrated in
An electronic circuit could be constructed to route a signal from the bottom-pads 15502 through the electrically connected upper-pads 15504 or upper-pads 15505 to the appropriate circuit at the upper layer, such as the transferred layer of the donor wafer multiple layers of monolithically stacked transistors and circuitry sub-stack 15402. Such switch matrix would need to be designed according to the maximum misalignment error and the number of signals within that range. The programming of the switch matrix to properly connect stack layer signals could be done based on, for example, an electrically read on-chip test structure or on an optical misalignment measurement. Such electronic switch matrices are known in the art and are not detailed herein. Additionally, the misalignment compensation and reroute to properly connect stack layer signals could be done in the transferred layer (such as the transferred layer of the donor wafer multiple layers of monolithically stacked transistors and circuitry sub-stack 15402) metal connection layers and misalignment compensation structures as has been described before with respect to
Another variation of such structures could be made to meet the same requirements as the bottom-pads/upper-pads structures described in
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
There may be many ways to build the multilayer 3D IC, as some embodiments of the invention may follow. Wafers could be processed sequentially one layer at a time to include one or more transistor layers and then connect the structure of one wafer on top of the other wafer. In such case the donor wafer, for example transferred layer of the donor wafer multiple layers of monolithically stacked transistors and circuitry sub-stack 15402, may be a fully processed multi-layer wafer and the placing on top of the acceptor wafer, for example acceptor wafer 15410, could include flipping it over or using a carrier method to avoid flipping. In each case the non-essential substrate could be cut or etched away using layer transfer techniques such as those described before.
Wafers could be processed in parallel, each one potentially utilizing a different wafer fab or process flow and then proceeding as in the paragraph directly above.
One wafer could contain non repeating structures while the other one would contain repeating structures such as memory or programmable logic. In such case there are strong benefits for high connectivity between the wafers, while misalignment can be less of an issue as the repeating structure might be tolerant of such misalignment.
The transferred wafer or layer, for example transferred layer of the donor wafer multiple layers of monolithically stacked transistors and circuitry sub-stack 15402, could include a repeating transistors structure but subsequent to the bonding the follow-on process would align to the structure correctly as described above to keep to a minimum the overhead resulting from the wafer bonding misalignment.
An additional use for the high density of TLVs 11160 in
While the previous paragraph describes how an existing power distribution network or structure can transfer heat efficiently from logic cells or gates in 3D-ICs to their heat sink, many techniques to enhance this heat transfer capability will be described herein. These embodiments of the invention can provide several benefits, including lower thermal resistance and the ability to cool higher power 3D-ICs. As well, thermal contacts may provide mechanical stability and structural strength to low-k Back End Of Line (BEOL) structures, which may need to accommodate shear forces, such as from CMP and/or cleaving processes. These techniques may be useful for different implementations of 3D-ICs, including, for example, monolithic 3D-ICs and TSV-based 3D-ICs.
A thermal connection may be defined as the combination of a thermal contact and a thermal junction. The thermal connections illustrated in
Thermal contacts similar to those illustrated in
The thermal path techniques illustrated with
When a chip is typically designed, a cell library consisting of various logic cells such as NAND gates, NOR gates and other gates may be created, and the chip design flow proceeds using this cell library. It will be clear to one skilled in the art that a cell library may be created wherein each cell's layout can be optimized from a thermal perspective and based on heat removal criteria such as maximum allowable transistor channel temperature (i.e. where each cell's layout can be optimized such that substantially all portions of the cell may have low thermal resistance to the VDD and GND contacts, and such, to the power bus and the ground bus.).
While concepts in this patent application have been described with respect to 3D-ICs with two stacked device layers, those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that it can be valid for 3D-ICs with more than two stacked device layers.
As layers may be stacked in a 3D IC, the power density per unit area typically increases. The thermal conductivity of mono-crystalline silicon is poor at 150 W/m-K and silicon dioxide, the most common electrical insulator in modern silicon integrated circuits, may have a very poor thermal conductivity at 1.4 W/m-K. If a heat sink is placed at the top of a 3D IC stack, then the bottom chip or layer (farthest from the heat sink) has the poorest thermal conductivity to that heat sink, since the heat from that bottom layer may travel through the silicon dioxide and silicon of the chip(s) or layer(s) above it.
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In both of the packaging types described in
The conditions for choosing the CTE matched carrier wafer 13914 for this embodiment of the present invention include the following. Firstly, the CTE matched carrier wafer 13914 can have a CTE close to that of the organic substrate 13920. For example, the CTE of the CTE matched carrier wafer 13914 should be within about 10 ppm/K of the CTE of the organic substrate 13920. Secondly, the volume of the CTE matched carrier wafer 13914 can be much higher than the silicon layer 13906. For example, the volume of the CTE matched carrier wafer 13914 may be greater than about 5 times the volume of the silicon layer 13906. When this volume mismatch happens, the CTE of the combination of the silicon layer 13906 and the CTE matched carrier wafer 13914 may be close to that of the CTE matched carrier wafer 13914. If these two conditions may be met, the issues of co-efficient of thermal expansion mismatch described previously may be ameliorated, and a reliable packaging process may be obtained without underfill being used.
The organic substrate 13920 typically may have a CTE of about 17 ppm/K and the printed wiring board 13924 typically may be constructed of FR4 which has a CTE of about 18 ppm/K. If the CTE matched carrier wafer is constructed of an organic material having a CTE of about 17 ppm/K, it can be observed that issues of co-efficient of thermal expansion mismatch described previously are ameliorated, and a reliable packaging process may be obtained without underfill being used. If the CTE matched carrier wafer is constructed of a copper alloy having a CTE of about 17 ppm/K, it can be observed that issues of co-efficient of thermal expansion mismatch described previously may be ameliorated, and a reliable packaging process may be obtained without underfill being used. If the CTE matched carrier wafer may be constructed of an aluminum alloy material having a CTE of about 24 ppm/K, it can be observed that issues of co-efficient of thermal expansion mismatch described previously are ameliorated, and a reliable packaging process may be obtained without underfill being used. Silicon layer 13906, buried oxide layer 13904, interconnect layers 13908 may be regions atop silicon layer/substrate 13902.
There may be two illustrative conditions while choosing the CTE matched carrier wafer 14014 for this embodiment of the invention. Firstly, the CTE matched carrier wafer 14014 may have a CTE close to that of the organic substrate 14020. Illustratively, the CTE of the CTE matched carrier wafer 14014 may be within about 10 ppm/K of the CTE of the organic substrate 14020. Secondly, the volume of the CTE matched carrier wafer 14014 may be much higher than the silicon layer 14006. Illustratively, the volume of the CTE matched carrier wafer 14014 may be, for example, greater than about 5 times the volume of the silicon layer 14006. When this happens, the CTE of the combination of the silicon layer 14006 and the CTE matched carrier wafer 14014 may be close to that of the CTE matched carrier wafer 14014. If these two conditions are met, the issues of co-efficient of thermal expansion mismatch described previously may be ameliorated, and a reliable packaging process may be obtained without underfill being used. Silicon layer 14006, buried p+ silicon layer 14004, and interconnect layers 14008 may also be regions that are atop silicon layer/substrate 14002.
The organic substrate 14020 typically has a CTE of about 17 ppm/K and the printed wiring board 14024 typically may be constructed of FR4 which has a CTE of about 18 ppm/K. If the CTE matched carrier wafer may be constructed of an organic material having a CTE of 17 ppm/K, it can be observed that issues of co-efficient of thermal expansion mismatch described previously are ameliorated, and a reliable packaging process may be obtained without underfill being used. If the CTE matched carrier wafer may be constructed of a copper alloy having a CTE of about 17 ppm/K, it can be observed that issues of co-efficient of thermal expansion mismatch described previously are ameliorated, and a reliable packaging process may be obtained without underfill being used. If the CTE matched carrier wafer may be constructed of an aluminum alloy material having a CTE of about 24 ppm/K, it can be observed that issues of co-efficient of thermal expansion mismatch described previously may be ameliorated, and a reliable packaging process may be obtained without underfill being used.
While
It will be clear to one skilled in the art that other methods to thin a wafer and attach a CTE matched carrier wafer exist. Other methods to thin a wafer include, but not limited to, CMP, plasma etch, wet chemical etch, or a combination of these processes. These processes may be supplemented with various metrology schemes to monitor wafer thickness during thinning. Carefully timed thinning processes may also be used.
As well, the independent formation of each transistor layer may enable the use of materials other than silicon to construct transistors. For example, a thin III-V compound quantum well channel such as InGaAs and InSb may be utilized on one or more of the 3D layers described above by direct layer transfer or deposition and the use of buffer compounds such as GaAs and InAlAs to buffer the silicon and III-V lattice mismatches. This feature may enable high mobility transistors that can be optimized independently for p and n-channel use, solving the integration difficulties of incorporating n and p III-V transistors on the same substrate, and also the difficulty of integrating the III-V transistors with conventional silicon transistors on the same substrate. For example, the first layer silicon transistors and metallization generally cannot be exposed to temperatures higher than about 400° C. The III-V compounds, buffer layers, and dopings generally may need processing temperatures above that 400° C. threshold. By use of the pre deposited, doped, and annealed layer donor wafer formation and subsequent donor to acceptor wafer transfer techniques described above and illustrated, for example, in
It also should be noted that the 3D programmable system, where the logic fabric may be sized by dicing a wafer of tiled array as illustrated in
When a substrate wafer, carrier wafer, or donor wafer may be thinned by a ion-cut & cleaving method in this document, there may be other methods that may be employed to thin the wafer. For example, a boron implant and anneal may be utilized to create a layer in the silicon substrate to be thinned that will provide a wet chemical etch stop plane. A dry etch, such as a halogen gas cluster beam, may be employed to thin a silicon substrate and then smooth the silicon surface with an oxygen gas cluster beam. Additionally, these thinning techniques may be utilized independently or in combination to achieve the proper thickness and defect free surface as may be needed by the process flow.
Alternatively, the n+Si layer 23208 and p− Si layer 23210 can be formed by a buried layer implant of n+Si in a p− SOI wafer.
At the end of the process shown in
Alternatively, according to an embodiment of this present invention, surface non-planarities may be removed or reduced by treating the cleaved surface of the wafer or substrate in a hydrogen plasma at less than about 400° C. The hydrogen plasma source gases may include, for example, hydrogen, argon, nitrogen, hydrogen chloride, water vapor, methane, and so on. Hydrogen anneals at about 1100° C. are known to reduce surface roughness in silicon. By having a plasma, the temperature requirement can be reduced to less than about 400° C. A tool that might be employed is the TEL SPA tool.
Alternatively, according to another embodiment of this present invention, a thin film, such as, for example, a Silicon oxide or photosensitive resist, may be deposited atop the cleaved surface of the wafer or substrate and etched back. The etchant that may be required for this etch-back process may have approximately equal etch rates for both silicon and the deposited thin film. This etchant could reduce non-planarities on the wafer surface.
Alternatively, Gas Cluster Ion Beam technology may be utilized for smoothing surfaces after cleaving along an implanted plane of hydrogen or other atomic species.
Implanting hydrogen through the gate dielectric regions 14610 in
An alternative embodiment of the invention may involve forming a dummy gate transistor structure, as previously described for the replacement gate process, for the structure shown in
In an alternative embodiment of the invention described in
In general logic devices may include varying quantities of logic elements, varying amounts of memories, and varying amounts of I/O. The continuous array of the prior art may allow defining various die sizes out of the same wafers and accordingly varying amounts of logic, but it may be far more difficult to vary the three-way ratio between logic, I/O, and memory. In addition, there may exist different types of memories such as SRAM, DRAM, Flash, and others, and there may exist different types of JI/such as SerDes. Some applications might need still other functions such as processor, DSP, analog functions, and others.
Some embodiments of the invention may enable a different approach. Instead of trying to put substantially all of these different functions onto one programmable die, which may need a large number of very expensive mask sets, it may use Through-Silicon Via to construct configurable systems. The technology of “Package of integrated circuits and vertical integration” has been described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,322,903 issued to Oleg Siniaguine and Sergey Savastiouk on Nov. 27, 2001.
Accordingly some embodiments of the invention may suggest the use of a continuous array of tiles focusing each one on a single, or very few types of, function. The target system may then be constructed using desired number of tiles of desired type stacked on top of each other and electrically connected with TSVs or monolithic 3D approaches, thus, a 3D Configurable System may result.
It should be noted that in general the lithography projected over surface of the wafer may be done by repeatedly projecting a reticle image over the wafer in a “step-and-repeat” manner. In some cases it might be possible to consider differently the separation between repeating tile 1101 within a reticle image vs. tiles that relate to two projections. For simplicity this description will use the term wafer but in some cases it will apply, for example, only to tiles with one reticle.
The repeating tile 1101 could be of various sizes. For FPGA applications it may be reasonable to assume tile 1101 to have an edge size between about 0.5 mm to about 1 mm which may allow good balance between the end-device size and acceptable relative area loss due to the unused potential dice lines 1102. Potential dice lines may be area regions of the processed wafer where the layers and structures on the wafer may be arranged such that the wafer dicing process may optimally proceed. For example, the potential dice lines may be line segments that surround a desired potential product die wherein the majority of the potential dice line may have no structures and may have a die seal edge structure to protect the desired product die from damages as a result of the dicing process. The dicing process can be accomplished by scribing and breaking, by mechanical sawing (normally with a machine called a dicing saw) or by laser cutting.
There may be many illustrative advantages for a uniform repeating tile structure of
An additional advantage for this construction of a tiled FPGA array with MCUs may be in the construction of an SoC with embedded FPGA function. A single tile 3601 could be connected to an SoC using Through Silcon Vias (TSVs) and accordingly may provide a self-contained embedded FPGA function.
Clearly, the same scheme can be modified to use the East/North (or any other combination of orthogonal directions) to encode effectively an identical priority scheme.
I/O circuits may be a good example of where it could be illustratively advantageous to utilize an older generation process. Usually, the process drivers may be SRAM and logic circuits. It often may take longer to develop the analog function associated with I/O circuits, SerDes circuits, PLLs, and other linear functions. Additionally, while there may be an advantage to using smaller transistors for the logic functionality, I/Os may need stronger drive and relatively larger transistors and may enable higher operating voltages. Accordingly, using an older process may be more cost effective, as the older process wafer might cost less while still performing effectively.
An additional function that it might be advantageous to pull out of the programmable logic die and onto one of the other dies in the 3D system, connected by Through-Silicon-Vias, may be the Clock circuits and their associated PLL, DLL, and control clock circuits and distribution. These circuits may often be area consuming and may also be challenging in view of noise generation. They also could in many cases be more effectively implemented using an older process. The Clock tree and distribution circuits could be included in the I/O die. Additionally the clock signal could be transferred to the programmable die using the Through-Silicon-Vias (TSVs) or by optical means. A technique to transfer data between dies by optical means was presented for example in U.S. Pat. No. 6,052,498 assigned to Intel Corp.
Alternatively an optical clock distribution could be used. There may be new techniques to build optical guides on silicon or other substrates. An optical clock distribution may be utilized to minimize the power used for clock signal distribution and may enable low skew and low noise for the rest of the digital system. Having the optical clock constructed on a different die and then connected to the digital die by means of Through-Silicon-Vias or by optical means, make it very practical, when compared to the prior art of integrating optical clock distribution with logic on the same die.
Alternatively the optical clock distribution guides and potentially some of the support electronics such as the conversion of the optical signal to electronic signal could be integrated by using layer transfer and smart cut approaches as been described before in
And as related to
Having wafers dedicated to each of these functions may support high volume generic product manufacturing. Then, similar to Lego® blocks, many different configurable systems could be constructed with various amounts of logic memory and I/O. In addition to the alternatives presented in
An additional function that would fit well for 3D systems using TSVs, as described, may be a power control function. In many cases it may be desired to shut down power at times to a portion of the IC that is not currently operational. Using controlled power distribution by an external die connected by TSVs may be illustratively advantageous as the power supply voltage to this external die could be higher because it may be using an older process. Having a higher supply voltage allows easier and better control of power distribution to the controlled die.
Those components of configurable systems could be built by one vendor, or by multiple vendors, who may agree on a standard physical interface to allow mix-and-match of various dies from various vendors.
The construction of the 3D Programmable System could be done for the general market use or custom-tailored for a specific customer.
Another illustrative advantage of some embodiments of this invention may be an ability to mix and match various processes. It might be illustratively advantageous to use memory from a leading edge process, while the I/O, and maybe an analog function die, could be used from an older process of mature technology (e.g., as discussed above).
The Through Silicon Via technology is constantly evolving. In the early generations such via would be 10 microns in diameter. Advanced work now demonstrating Through Silicon Via with less than a about 1-micron diameter. Yet, the density of connections horizontally within the die may typically still be far denser than the vertical connection using Through Silicon Via.
In another alternative of the present invention the logic portion could be broken up into multiple dies, which may be of the same size, to be integrated to a 3D configurable system. Similarly it could be advantageous to divide the memory into multiple dies, and so forth, with other functions.
Recent work on 3D integration may show effective ways to bond wafers together and then dice those bonded wafers. This kind of assembly may lead to die structures such as shown in
An additional variation of the present invention may be the adaptation of the continuous array (presented in relation to at least
The continuous logic terrain could use any transistor style including the various transistors previously presented. An additional advantage to some of the 3D layer transfer techniques previously presented may be the option to pre-build, in high volume, transistor terrains for further reduction of 3D custom IC manufacturing costs.
Similarly a memory terrain could be constructed as a continuous repeating memory structure with a fully populated reticle. The non-repeating elements of most memories may be the address decoder and sometimes the sense circuits. Those non repeating elements may be constructed using the logic transistors of the underlying or overlying layer.
The generic continuous array 8430 may be a reticle step field sized terrain of SRAM bit cells 8420 wherein the transistor layers and even the Metal 1 layer may be used by substantially all designs.
As illustrated in
As illustrated in
Passivation of the edge created by the custom function etching may be accomplished as follows. If the custom function etched edge is formed on a layer or strata that is not the topmost one, then it may be passivated or sealed by filling the etched out area with dielectric, such as a Spin-On-Glass (SOG) method, and CMPing flat to continue to the next 3DIC layer transfer. As illustrated in
In such way a single expensive mask set can be used to build many wafers for different memory sizes and finished through another mask set that is used to build many logic wafers that can be customized by few metal layers.
Person skilled in the art will recognize that it is now possible to assemble a true monolithic 3D stack of mono-crystalline silicon layers or strata with high performance devices using advanced lithography that repeatedly reuse same masks, with only few custom metal masks for each device layer. Such person will also appreciate that one can stack in the same way a mix of disparate layers, some carrying transistor array for general logic and other carrying larger scale blocks such as memories, analog elements, Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), and I/O. Moreover, such a person would also appreciate that the custom function formation by etching may be accomplished with masking and etching processes such as, for example, a hard-mask and Reactive Ion Etching (RIE), or wet chemical etching, or plasma etching. Furthermore, the passivation or sealing of the custom function etching edge may be stair stepped so to enable improved sidewall coverage of the overlapping layers of passivation material to seal the edge
Constructing 3D ICs utilizing multiple layers of different function may combine 3D layers using the layer transfer techniques according to some embodiments of the invention, with substantially fully prefabricated devices connected by industry standard TSV techniques.
Yield repair for random logic may be an embodiment of the invention. The 3D IC techniques presented may allow the construction of a very complex logic 3D IC by using multiple layers of logic. In such a complex 3D IC, enabling the repair of random defects common in IC manufacturing may be highly desirable. Repair of repeating structures is known and commonly used in memories and will be presented in respect to
At the fabrication, the 3D IC wafer may go through a full scan test. If a fault is detected, a yield repair process may be applied. Using the design data base, repair logic may be built on the upper layer of repair logic 8632. The repair logic may have access to substantially all the primary outputs as they are all available on the top layer. Accordingly, those outputs needed for the repair may be used in the reconstruction of the exact logic found to be faulty. The reconstructed logic may include some enhancement such as drive size or metal wires strength to compensate for the longer lines going up and then down. The repair logic, as a de-facto replacement of the faulty logic ‘cone,’ may be built using the uncommitted transistors on the top layer. The top layer may be customized with a custom metal layer defined for each die on the wafer by utilizing the direct write eBeam. The repair flow may also be used for performance enhancement. If the wafer test includes timing measurements, a slow performing logic ‘cone’ could be replaced in a similar manner to a faulty logic ‘cone’ described previously, e.g., in the preceding paragraph.
The elements of the present invention related to
An additional advantage of this yield repair design methodology may be the ability to reuse logic layers from one design to another design. For example, a 3D IC system may be designed wherein one of the layers may comprise a WiFi transceiver receiver. And such circuit may now be needed for a completely different 3D IC. It might be advantageous to reuse the same WiFi transceiver receiver in the new design by just having the receiver as one of the new 3D IC design layers to save the redesign effort and the associated NRE (non-recurring expense) for masks and etc. The reuse could be applied to many other functions, allowing the 3D IC to resemble an old way of integrating functions—the PC (printed circuit) Board. For such a concept to work well, a connectivity standard for the connection of wires up and down may be desirable.
Another application of these concepts could be the use of the upper layer to modify the clock timing by adjusting the clock of the actual device and its various fabricated elements. Scan circuits could be used to measure the clock skew and report it to an external design tool. The external design tool could construct the timing modification that would be applied by the clock modification circuits. A direct write ebeam could then be used to form the transistors and circuitry on the top layer to apply those clock modifications for a better yield and performance of the 3D IC end product.
An alternative approach to increase yield of complex systems through use of 3D structure is to duplicate the same design on two layers vertically stacked on top of each other and use BIST techniques similar to those described in the previous sections to identify and replace malfunctioning logic cones. This approach may prove particularly effective repairing very large ICs with very low yields at the manufacturing stage using one-time, or hard to reverse, repair structures such as, for example, antifuses or Direct-Write e-Beam customization.
Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) at the logic cone level can also function as an effective field repair method, though it may really create a high level of redundancy that can mask rather than repair errors due to delayed failure mechanisms or marginally slow logic cones. If factory repair is used to make sure all the equivalent logic cones on each layer test functional before the 3D IC is shipped from the factory, the level of redundancy may be even higher. The cost of having three layers versus having two layers, with or without a repair layer may be factored into determining an embodiment for any application.
An alternative TMR approach may be shown in exemplary 3D IC 12700 in
The logic cones 12710, 12720 and 12730 all may perform a substantially identical logic function. The flip-flops 12714, 12724 and 12734 may be illustratively scan flip-flops. If a Repair Layer is present (not shown in
One illustrative advantage of the embodiment of
Another TMR approach is shown in exemplary 3D IC 12800 in
The logic cones 12810, 12820 and 12830 all may perform a substantially identical logic function. The flip-flops 12814, 12824 and 12834 may be illustratively scan flip-flops. If a Repair Layer is present (not shown in
One illustrative advantage of the embodiment of
Another TMR embodiment is shown in exemplary 3D IC 12900 in
The logic cones 12910, 12920 and 12930 all may perform a substantially identical logic function. The flip-flops 12914, 12924 and 12934 may be illustratively scan flip-flops. If a Repair Layer is present (not shown in
One illustrative advantage of the embodiment of
Some embodiments of the invention can be applied to a large variety of commercial as well as high-reliability aerospace and military applications. The ability to fix defects in the factory with Repair Layers combined with the ability to automatically fix delayed defects (by masking them with three layer Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) embodiments or replacing faulty circuits with two layer replacement embodiments) may allow the creation of much larger and more complex three dimensional systems than may be possible with conventional two dimensional integrated circuit (IC) technology. These various aspects of the present invention can be traded off against the cost requirements of the target application.
In order to reduce the cost of a 3D IC according to some embodiments of the present invention, it may be desirable to use the same set of masks to manufacture each Layer. This can be done by creating an identical structure of vias in an appropriate pattern on each layer and then offsetting it by a desired amount when aligning Layer 1 and Layer 2.
Similarly,
As previously discussed, in some embodiments of the present invention it may be desirable for the control logic on each Layer of a 3D IC to know which layer it is in. It may also be desirable to use all of the same masks for each of the Layers. In an embodiment using the one interlayer via pitch offset between layers to correctly couple the functional and repair connections, a different via pattern can be placed in proximity to the control logic to exploit the interlayer offset and uniquely identify each of the layers to its control logic.
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the metal connections between Layer 1 and Layer 2 may typically be much larger including larger pads and numerous TSVs or other interlayer interconnections. This increased size may make alignment of the power supply nodes easy and ensures that L1/V and L2/V may both be at the positive power supply potential and that L1/G and L2/G may both be at ground potential.
Several embodiments of the invention may utilize Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) distributed over three Layers. In such embodiments it may be desirable to use the same masks for all three Layers.
In via metal overlap pattern 13200, via metal overlap pads 13202, 13212 and 13216 may be coupled to the X0 input of the MAJ3 gate on that layer, via metal overlap pads 13204, 13208 and 13218 may be coupled to the X1 input of the MAJ3 gate on that layer, and via metal overlap pads 13206, 13210 and 13214 may be coupled to the X2 input of the MAJ3 gate on that layer.
Thus there may be three locations where a via metal overlap pad can be aligned on all three layers.
Thus the interlayer vias 13230 and 13232 may be vertically aligned and couple together the Layer 1 X2 MAJ3 gate input, the Layer 2 X0 MAJ3 gate input, and the Layer 3 X1 MAJ3 gate input. Similarly, the interlayer vias 13240 and 13242 may be vertically aligned and couple together the Layer 1 X1 MAJ3 gate input, the Layer 2 X2 MAJ3 gate input, and the Layer 3 X0 MAJ3 gate input. Finally, the interlayer vias 13250 and 13252 may be vertically aligned and couple together the Layer 1 X0 MAJ3 gate input, the Layer 2 X1 MAJ3 gate input, and the Layer 3 X2 MAJ3 gate input. Since the X0 input of the MAJ3 gate in each layer may be driven from that layer, each driver may be coupled to a different MAJ3 gate input on each layer preventing drivers from being shorted together and the each MAJ3 gate on each layer may receive inputs from each of the three drivers on the three Layers.
Some embodiments of the invention can be applied to a large variety of commercial as well as high-reliability aerospace and military applications. The ability to fix defects in the factory with Repair Layers combined with the ability to automatically fix delayed defects (by masking them with three layer TMR embodiments or replacing faulty circuits with two layer replacement embodiments) may allow the creation of much larger and more complex three dimensional systems than may be possible with conventional two dimensional integrated circuit (IC) technology. These various aspects of the present invention can be traded off against the cost requirements of the target application.
For example, a 3D IC targeted at inexpensive consumer products where cost may be a dominant consideration might do factory repair to maximize yield in the factory but not include any field repair circuitry to minimize costs in products with short useful lifetimes. A 3D IC aimed at higher end consumer or lower end business products might use factory repair combined with two layer field replacement. A 3D IC targeted at enterprise class computing devices which balance cost and reliability might skip doing factory repair and use TMR for both acceptable yields as well as field repair. A 3D IC targeted at high reliability, military, aerospace, space, or radiation-tolerant applications might do factory repair to ensure that all three instances of every circuit may be fully functional and use TMR for field repair as well as SET and SEU filtering. Battery operated devices for the military market might add circuitry to allow the device to operate, for example, only one of the three TMR layers to save battery life and include a radiation detection circuit which automatically switches into TMR mode when needed if the operating environment may change. Many other combinations and tradeoffs may be possible within the scope of the illustrated embodiments of the invention.
It is worth noting that many of the principles of the invention may also applicable to conventional two dimensional integrated circuits (2D ICs). For example, an analogous of the two layer field repair embodiments could be built on a single layer with both versions of the duplicate circuitry on a single 2D IC employing the same cross connections between the duplicate versions. A programmable technology like, for example, fuses, antifuses, flash memory storage, etc., could be used to effect both factory repair and field repair. Similarly, analogous versions of some of the TMR embodiments may have unique topologies in 2D ICs as well as in 3D ICs which may also improve the yield or reliability of 2D IC systems if implemented on a single layer.
Some embodiments of the invention may be to use the concepts of repair and redundancy layers to implement extremely large designs that extend beyond the size of a single reticle, up to and inclusive of a full wafer. This concept of Wafer Scale Integration (“WSI”) was attempted in the past by companies such as Trilogy Systems and was abandoned because of extremely low yield. The ability of some of the embodiments of the invention is to effect multiple repairs by using a repair layer, or use of masking multiple faults by using redundancy layers, the result may be to make WSI with very high yield a viable option.
One embodiment of the invention may improve WSI by using the Continuous Array (CA) concept described herein this document. In the case of WSI, however, the CA may extend beyond a single reticle and may potentially span the whole wafer. A custom mask may be used to define unused parts of the wafer which may be etched away.
Particular care must be taken when a design such as WSI crosses reticle boundaries. Alignment of features across a reticle boundary may be worse than the alignment of features within the reticle, and WSI designs must accommodate this potential misalignment. One way of addressing this is to use wider than minimum metal lines, with larger than minimum pitches, to cross the reticle boundary, while using a full lithography resolution within the reticle.
Another embodiment of the invention uses custom reticles for location on the wafer, creating a partial of a full custom design across the wafer. As in the previous case, wider lines and coarser line pitches may be used for reticle boundary crossing.
In substantially all WSI embodiments yield-enhancement may be achieved through fault masking techniques such as TMR, or through repair layers, as illustrated in FIG. 24 through FIG. 44 of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/098,997. In another variation on the WSI invention one can selectively replace blocks on one layer with blocks on the other layer to provide speed improvement rather than to effect logical repair.
In another variation on the WSI invention one can use vertical stacking techniques as illustrated in FIG. 12A-12E of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/098,997 to flexibly provide variable amounts of specialized functions, and I/O in particular, to WSI designs.
When the end product programmable system may be programmed for the end application, each tile can run its own Built-in Test, for example, by using its own MCU. A tile detected to have a defect may be replaced by the tile in the redundancy layer, such as second programmable layer 4110. The replacement may be done by the tile that may be at the same location but in the redundancy layer and therefore it may have an acceptable impact on the overall product functionality and performance. For example, if tile (1,0,0) has a defect then tile (1,0,1) may be programmed to have exactly the same function and may replace tile (1,0,0) by properly setting the inter tile programmable connections. Therefore, if defective tile (1,0,0) was supposed to be connected to tile (2,0,0) by connection 4104 with programmable element 4106, then programmable element 4106 may be turned off and programmable elements 4116, 4117, 4107 will be turned on instead. A similar multilayer connection structure may be used for any connection in or out of a repeating tile. So if the tile has a defect, the redundant tile of the redundant layer may be programmed to the defected tile functionality and the multilayer inter tile structure may be activated to disconnect the faulty tile and connect the redundant tile. The inter layer vertical connection 4140 could be also used when tile (2,0,0) is defective to insert tile (2,0,1), of the redundant layer, instead. In such case (2,0,1) may be programmed to have exactly the same function as tile (2,0,0), programmable element 4108 may be turned off and programmable elements 4118, 4117, 4107 may be turned on instead. This testing could be done from off chip rather than a BIST MCU.
An additional embodiment of the invention may be a modified TSV (Through Silicon Via) flow. This flow may be for wafer-to-wafer TSV and may provide a technique whereby the thickness of the added wafer may be reduced to about 1 micrometer (micron).
The bond may be oxide-to-oxide in some applications or copper-to-copper in other applications. In addition, the bond may be by a hybrid bond wherein some of the bonding surface may be oxide and some may be copper.
After bonding, the top substrate wafer 9304 may be thinned down to about 60 micron in a conventional back-lap and CMP process.
The next step may include a high accuracy measurement of the top wafer 9306 thickness. Then, using a high power 1-4 MeV H+ implant, a cleave plane 9310 may be defined in the top wafer 9306. The cleave plane 9310 may be positioned about 1 micron above the bond surface as illustrated in
Having the accurate measure of the top wafer 9306 thickness and the highly controlled implant process may enable cleaving most of the top wafer 9306 out thereby leaving a very thin layer 9312 of about 1 micron, bonded on top of the first wafer 9302 as illustrated in
An advantage of this process flow may be that an additional wafer with circuits could now be placed and bonded on top of the bonded structure 9322 in a similar manner. But first a connection layer may be built on the back of thin layer 9312 to allow electrical connection to the bonded structure 9322 circuits. Having the top layer thinned to a single micron level may allow such electrical connection metal layers to be fully aligned to the top wafer thin layer 9312 electrical circuits 9305 and may allow the vias through the back side of top thin layer 9312 to be relatively small, of about 100 nm in diameter.
The thinness of the top thin layer 9312 may enable the modified TSV to be at the level of 100 nm vs. the 5 microns necessary for TSVs that need to go through 50 microns of silicon. Unfortunately the misalignment of the wafer-to-wafer bonding process may still be quite significant at about +1-0.5 micron. Accordingly, as described elsewhere in this document in relation to
It may be desirable to increase the connection density using a concept as illustrated in FIG. 80 of U.S. Pat. No. 8,273,610, incorporated herein by reference, and the associated explanations. In the modified TSV case, it may be much more challenging to do so because the two wafers being bonded may be fully processed and once bonded, only very limited access to the landing strips may be available. However, to construct a via, etching through all layers may be needed.
Substantially all the landing strips 9412 and 9413 of
As illustrated in
It should be stated again that embodiments of the invention could be applied to many applications other than programmable logic such a Graphics Processor which may include many repeating processing units. Other applications might include general logic design in 3D ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) or systems combining ASIC layers with layers comprising at least in part other special functions. Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that many more embodiments and combinations are possible by employing the inventive principles contained herein and such embodiments will readily suggest themselves to such skilled persons. Thus the invention is not to be limited in any way except by the appended claims.
Yet another alternative to implement 3D redundancy to improve yield by replacing a defective circuit may be by the use of Direct Write E-beam instead of a programmable connection.
An additional variation of the programmable 3D system may comprise a tiled array of programmable logic tiles connected with I/O structures that may be pre-fabricated on the base wafer 1402 of
Additional flexibility and reuse of masks may be achieved by utilizing, for example, only a portion of the full reticle exposure. Modern steppers may allow covering portions of the reticle and hence projecting only a portion of the reticle. Accordingly a portion of a mask set may be used for one function while another portion of that same mask set would be used for another function. For example, let the structure of
In yet an additional alternative illustrative embodiment of the invention, the 3D antifuse Configurable System, may also include a Programming Die. In some cases of FPGA products, and primarily in antifuse-based products, there may be an external apparatus that may be used for the programming the device. In many cases it may be a user convenience to integrate this programming function into the FPGA device. This may result in a significant die overhead as the programming process may need higher voltages as well as control logic. The programmer function could be designed into a dedicated Programming Die. Such a Programmer Die could include the charge pump, to generate the higher programming voltage, and a controller with the associated programming to program the antifuse configurable dies within the 3D Configurable circuits, and the programming check circuits. The Programming Die might be fabricated using a lower cost older semiconductor process. An additional advantage of this 3D architecture of the Configurable System may be a high volume cost reduction option wherein the antifuse layer may be replaced with a custom layer and, therefore, the Programming Die could be removed from the 3D system for a more cost effective high volume production.
It will be appreciated by persons of ordinary skill in the art, that some embodiments of the invention may be using the term antifuse as used as the common name in the industry, but it may also refer, according to some embodiments, to any micro element that functions like a switch, meaning a micro element that initially may have highly resistive-OFF state, and electronically it could be made to switch to a very low resistance-ON state. It could also correspond to a device to switch ON-OFF multiple times—a re-programmable switch. As an example there may be new technologies being developed, such as the electro-statically actuated Metal-Droplet micro-switch introduced by C. J. Kim of UCLA micro & nano manufacturing lab, which may be compatible for integration onto CMOS chips.
It will be appreciated by persons skilled in the art that the present invention may not be limited to antifuse configurable logic and it can be applicable to other non-volatile configurable logic. An example for such application is the Flash based configurable logic. Flash programming may also need higher voltages, and having the programming transistors and the programming circuits in the base diffusion layer may reduce the overall density of the base diffusion layer. Using various illustrative embodiments of the invention may be useful and could allow a higher device density. It may therefore be suggested to build the programming transistors and the programming circuits, not as part of the diffusion layer, but according to one or more illustrative embodiments of the invention. In high volume production, one or more custom masks could be used to replace the function of the Flash programmiing and accordingly may save the need to add on the programming transistors and the programming circuits.
Unlike metal-to-metal antifuses that could be placed as part of the metal interconnection, Flash circuits may need to be fabricated in the base diffusion layers. As such it might be less efficient to have the programming transistor in a layer far above. An illustrative alternative embodiment of the invention may be to use Through-Silicon-Via 816 to connect the configurable logic device and its Flash devices to an underlying structure of Foundation layer 814 including the programming transistors.
In this document, various terms may have been used while generally referring to the element. For example, “house” may refer to the first mono-crystalline layer with its transistors and metal interconnection layer or layers. This first mono-crystalline layer may have also been referred to as the main wafer and sometimes as the acceptor wafer and sometimes as the base wafer.
Some embodiments of the invention may include alternative techniques to build IC (Integrated Circuit) devices including techniques and methods to construct 3D IC systems. Some embodiments of the invention may enable device solutions with far less power consumption than prior art. These device solutions could be very useful for the growing application of mobile electronic devices and mobile systems, such as, for example, mobile phones, smart phone, and cameras. For example, incorporating the 3D IC semiconductor devices according to some embodiments of the invention within these mobile electronic devices and mobile systems could provide superior mobile units that could operate much more efficiently and for a much longer time than with prior art technology.
Smart mobile systems may be greatly enhanced by complex electronics at a limited power budget. The 3D technology described in the multiple embodiments of the invention would allow the construction of low power high complexity mobile electronic systems. For example, it would be possible to integrate into a small form function a complex logic circuit with high density high speed memory utilizing some of the 3D DRAM embodiments of the invention and add some non-volatile 3D NAND charge trap or RRAM described in some embodiments of the invention.
In U.S. application Ser. No. 12/903,862, filed by some of the inventors and assigned to the same assignee, a 3D micro display and a 3D image sensor are presented. Integrating one or both of these with complex logic and or memory could be very effective for mobile system. Additionally, mobile systems could be customized to some specific market applications by integrating some embodiments of the invention.
Moreover, utilizing 3D programmable logic or 3D gate array as had been described in some embodiments of the invention could be very effective in forming flexible mobile systems.
The need to reduce power to allow effective use of limited battery energy and also the lightweight and small form factor derived by highly integrating functions with low waste of interconnect and substrate could be highly benefitted by the redundancy and repair idea of the 3D monolithic technology as has been presented in embodiments of the invention. This unique technology could enable a mobile device that would be lower cost to produce or would require lower power to operate or would provide a lower size or lighter carry weight, and combinations of these 3D monolithic technology features may provide a competitive or desirable mobile system.
Another unique market that may be addressed by some of the embodiments of the invention could be a street corner camera with supporting electronics. The 3D image sensor described in the Ser. No. 12/903,862 application would be very effective for day/night and multi-spectrum surveillance applications. The 3D image sensor could be supported by integrated logic and memory such as, for example, a monolithic 3D IC with a combination of image processing and image compression logic and memory, both high speed memory such as 3D DRAM and high density non-volatile memory such as 3D NAND or RRAM or other memory, and other combinations. This street corner camera application would require low power, low cost, and low size or any combination of these features, and could be highly benefitted from the 3D technologies described herein.
3D ICs according to some embodiments of the invention could enable electronic and semiconductor devices with much a higher performance as a result from the shorter interconnect as well as semiconductor devices with far more complexity via multiple levels of logic and providing the ability to repair or use redundancy. The achievable complexity of the semiconductor devices according to some embodiments of the invention could far exceed what may be practical with the prior art technology. These potential advantages could lead to more powerful computer systems and improved systems that have embedded computers.
Some embodiments of the invention may enable the design of state of the art electronic systems at a greatly reduced non-recurring engineering (NRE) cost by the use of high density 3D FPGAs or various forms of 3D array base ICs with reduced custom masks as described previously. These systems could be deployed in many products and in many market segments. Reduction of the NRE may enable new product family or application development and deployment early in the product lifecycle by lowering the risk of upfront investment prior to a market being developed. The above potential advantages may also be provided by various mixes such as reduced NRE using generic masks for layers of logic and other generic masks for layers of memories and building a very complex system using the repair technology to overcome the inherent yield limitation. Another form of mix could be building a 3D FPGA and add on it 3D layers of customizable logic and memory so the end system could have field programmable logic on top of the factory customized logic. There may be many ways to mix the many innovative elements to form 3D IC to support the need of an end system, including using multiple devices wherein more than one device incorporates elements of embodiments of the invention. An end system could benefit from a memory device utilizing embodiments of the invention 3D memory integrated together with a high performance 3D FPGA integrated together with high density 3D logic, and so forth. Using devices that can use one or multiple elements according to some embodiments of the invention may allow for better performance or lower power and other illustrative advantages resulting from the use of some embodiments of the invention to provide the end system with a competitive edge. Such end system could be electronic based products or other types of systems that may include some level of embedded electronics, such as, for example, cars, and remote controlled vehicles.
Commercial wireless mobile communications have been developed for almost thirty years, and play a special role in today's information and communication technology Industries. The mobile wireless terminal device has become part of our life, as well as the Internet, and the mobile wireless terminal device may continue to have a more important role on a worldwide basis. Currently, mobile (wireless) phones are undergoing much development to provide advanced functionality. The mobile phone network is a network such as a GSM, GPRS, or WCDMA, 3G and 4G standards, and the network may allow mobile phones to communicate with each other. The base station may be for transmitting (and receiving) information to the mobile phone.
A typical mobile phone system may include, for example, a processor, a flash memory, a static random access memory, a display, a removable memory, a radio frequency (RF) receiver/transmitter, an analog base band (ABB), a digital base band (DBB), an image sensor, a high-speed bi-directional interface, a keypad, a microphone, and a speaker. A typical mobile phone system may include a multiplicity of an element, for example, two or more static random access memories, two or more displays, two or more RF receiver/transmitters, and so on.
Conventional radios used in wireless communications, such as radios used in conventional cellular telephones, typically may include several discrete RF circuit components. Some receiver architectures may employ superhetrodyne techniques. In a superhetrodyne architecture an incoming signal may be frequency translated from its radio frequency (RF) to a lower intermediate frequency (IF). The signal at IF may be subsequently translated to baseband where further digital signal processing or demodulation may take place. Receiver designs may have multiple IF stages. The reason for using such a frequency translation scheme is that circuit design at the lower IF frequency may be more manageable for signal processing. It is at these IF frequencies that the selectivity of the receiver may be implemented, automatic gain control (AGC) may be introduced, etc.
A mobile phone's need of a high-speed data communication capability in addition to a speech communication capability has increased in recent years. In GSM (Global System for Mobile communications), one of European Mobile Communications Standards, GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) has been developed for speeding up data communication by allowing a plurality of time slot transmissions for one time slot transmission in the GSM with the multiplexing TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) architecture. EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution) architecture provides faster communications over GPRS.
4th Generation (4G) mobile systems aim to provide broadband wireless access with nominal data rates of 100 Mbit/s. 4G systems may be based on the 3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution) cellular standard, WiMax or Flash-OFDM wireless metropolitan area network technologies. The radio interface in these systems may be based on all-IP packet switching, MIMO diversity, multi-carrier modulation schemes, Dynamic Channel Assignment (DCA) and channel-dependent scheduling.
Prior art such as U.S. application Ser. No. 12/871,984 may provide a description of a mobile device and its block-diagram.
It is understood that the use of specific component, device and/or parameter names (such as those of the executing utility/logic described herein) are for example only and not meant to imply any limitations on the invention. The invention may thus be implemented with different nomenclature/terminology utilized to describe the components/devices/parameters herein, without limitation. Each term utilized herein is to be given its broadest interpretation given the context in which that term is utilized. For example, as utilized herein, the following terms are generally defined:
(1) Mobile computing/communication device (MCD): is a device that may be a mobile communication device, such as a cell phone, or a mobile computer that performs wired and/or wireless communication via a connected wireless/wired network. In some embodiments, the MCD may include a combination of the functionality associated with both types of devices within a single standard device (e.g., a smart phones or personal digital assistant (PDA)) for use as both a communication device and a computing device.
A block diagram representation of an exemplary mobile computing device (MCD) is illustrated in
In addition to the above described hardware components of MCD 15600, various features of the described embodiments may be completed/supported via software (or firmware) code or logic stored within system memory 15606 or other storage (e.g., storage 15622) and may be executed by CPU 15602. Thus, for example, illustrated within system memory 15606 are a number of software/firmware/logic components, including operating system (OS) 15608 (e.g., Microsoft Windows® or Windows Mobile®, trademarks of Microsoft Corp, or GNU®/Linux®, registered trademarks of the Free Software Foundation and The Linux Mark Institute, and AIX®, registered trademark of International Business Machines), and word processing and/or other application(s) 15609. Also illustrated are a plurality (four illustrated) software implemented utilities, each providing different one of the various functions (or advanced features) described herein. Including within these various functional utilities are: Simultaneous Text Waiting (STW) utility 15611, Dynamic Area Code Pre-pending (DACP) utility 15612, Advanced Editing and Interfacing (AEI) utility 15613 and Safe Texting Device Usage (STDU) utility 15614. In actual implementation and for simplicity in the following descriptions, each of these different functional utilities are assumed to be packaged together as sub-components of a general MCD utility 15610, and the various utilities are interchangeably referred to as MCD utility 15610 when describing the utilities within the figures and claims. For simplicity, the following description will refer to a single utility, namely MCD utility 15610. MCD utility 15610 may, in some embodiments, be combined with one or more other software modules, including for example, word processing application(s) 15609 and/or OS 15608 to provide a single executable component, which then may provide the collective functions of each individual software component when the corresponding combined code of the single executable component is executed by CPU 15602. Each separate utility 111/112/113/114 is illustrated and described as a standalone or separate software/firmware component/module, which provides specific functions, as described below. As a standalone component/module, MCD utility 15610 may be acquired as an off-the-shelf or after-market or downloadable enhancement to existing program applications or device functions, such as voice call waiting functionality (not shown) and user interactive applications with editable content, such as, for example, an application within the Windows Mobile® suite of applications. In at least one implementation, MCD utility 15610 may be downloaded from a server or website of a wireless provider (e.g., wireless provider server 15637) or a third party server 15638, and either installed on MCD 15600 or executed from the wireless provider server 15637 or third party server 156138.
CPU 15602 may execute MCD utility 15610 as well as OS 15608, which, in one embodiment, may support the user interface features of MCD utility 15610, such as generation of a graphical user interface (GUI), where required/supported within MCD utility code. In several of the described embodiments, MCD utility 15610 may generate/provide one or more GUIs to enable user interaction with, or manipulation of, functional features of MCD utility 15610 and/or of MCD 15600. MCD utility 15610 may, in certain embodiments, enable certain hardware and firmware functions and may thus be generally referred to as MCD logic.
Some of the functions supported and/or provided by MCD utility 15610 may be enabled as processing code/instructions/logic executing on DSP/CPU 15602 and/or other device hardware, and the processor thus may complete the implementation of those function(s). Among, for example, the software code/instructions/logic provided by MCD utility 15610, and which are specific to some of the described embodiments of the invention, may be code/logic for performing several (one or a plurality) of the following functions: (1) Simultaneous texting during ongoing voice communication providing a text waiting mode for both single number mobile communication devices and multiple number mobile communication devices; (2) Dynamic area code determination and automatic back-filling of area codes when a requested/desired voice or text communication is initiated without the area code while the mobile communication device is outside of its home-base area code toll area; (3) Enhanced editing functionality for applications on mobile computing devices; (4) Automatic toggle from manual texting mode to voice-to-text based communication mode on detection of high velocity movement of the mobile communication device; and (5) Enhanced e-mail notification system providing advanced e-mail notification via (sender or recipient directed) texting to a mobile communication device.
Utilizing monolithic 3D IC technology described herein and in related application Ser. Nos. 12/903,862, 12/903,847, 12/904,103 and 13/041,405 significant power and cost could be saved. Most of the elements in MCD 15600 could be integrated in one 3D IC. Some of the MCD 15600 elements may be logic functions which could utilize monolithic 3D transistors such as, for example, RCAT or Gate-Last. Some of the MCD 15600 elements are storage devices and could be integrated on a 3D non-volatile memory device, such as, for example, 3D NAND or 3D RRAM, or volatile memory such as, for example, 3D DRAM or SRAM formed from RCAT or gate-last transistors, as been described herein. Storage 15622 elements formed in monolithic 3D could be integrated on top or under a logic layer to reduce power and space. Keyboard 15617 could be integrated as a touch screen or combination of image sensor and some light projection and could utilize structures described in some of the above mentioned related applications. The Network Comm Interface 15625 could utilize another layer of silicon optimized for RF and gigahertz speed analog circuits or even may be integrated on substrates, such as GaN, that may be a better fit for such circuits. As more and more transistors might be integrated to achieve a high complexity 3D IC system there might be a need to use some embodiments of the invention such as what were called repair and redundancy so to achieve good product yield.
Some of the system elements including non-mobile elements, such as the 3rd Party Server 15638, might also make use of some embodiments of the 3D IC inventions including repair and redundancy to achieve good product yield for high complexity and large integration. Such large integration may reduce power and cost of the end product which is most attractive and most desired by the system end-use customers.
Some embodiments of the 3D IC invention could be used to integrate many of the MCD 15600 blocks or elements into one or a few devices. As various blocks get tightly integrated, much of the power required to transfer signals between these elements may be reduced and similarly costs associated with these connections may be saved. Form factor may be compacted as the space associated with the individual substrate and the associated connections may be reduced by use of some embodiments of the 3D IC invention. For mobile device these may be very important competitive advantages. Some of these blocks might be better processed in different process flow or wafer fab location. For example the DSP/CPU 15602 is a logic function that might use a logic process flow while the storage 15622 might better be done using a NAND Flash technology process flow or wafer fab. An important advantage of some of the embodiments of the monolithic 3D inventions may be to allow some of the layers in the 3D structure to be processed using a logic process flow while another layer in the 3D structure might utilize a memory process flow, and then some other function the modems of the GPS 15624 might use a high speed analog process flow or wafer fab. As those diverse functions may be structured in one device onto many different layers, these diverse functions could be very effectively and densely vertically interconnected.
Some embodiments of the invention may include alternative techniques to build IC (Integrated Circuit) devices including techniques and methods to construct 3D IC systems. Some embodiments of the invention may enable device solutions with far less power consumption than prior art, or with more functionality in a smaller physical footprint. These device solutions could be very useful for the growing application of Autonomous in vivo Electronic Medical (AEM) devices and AEM systems such as ingestible “camera pills,” implantable insulin dispensers, implantable heart monitoring and stimulating devices, and the like. One such ingestible “camera pill” is the Philips' remote control “iPill”. For example, incorporating the 3D IC semiconductor devices according to some embodiments of the invention within these AEM devices and systems could provide superior autonomous units that could operate much more effectively and for a much longer time than with prior art technology. Sophisticated AEM systems may be greatly enhanced by complex electronics with limited power budget. The 3D technology described in many of the embodiments of the invention would allow the construction of a low power high complexity AEM system. For example it would be possible to integrate into a small form function a complex logic circuit with high density high speed memory utilizing some of the 3D DRAM embodiments herein and to add some non-volatile 3D NAND charge trap or RRAM described in embodiments herein. Also in another application Ser. No. 12/903,862 filled by some of the inventors and assigned to the same assignee a 3D micro display and a 3D image sensor are presented. Integrating one or both to complex logic and or memory could be very effective for retinal implants. Additional AEM systems could be customized to some specific market applications. Utilizing 3D programmable logic or 3D gate array as has been described in some embodiments herein could be very effective. The need to reduce power to allow effective use of battery and also the light weight and small form factor derived by highly integrating functions with low waste of interconnect and substrate could benefit from the redundancy and repair idea of the 3D monolithic technology as has been presented in some of the inventive embodiments herein. This unique technology could enable disposable AEM devices that would be at a lower cost to produce and/or would require lower power to operate and/or would require lower size and/or lighter to carry and combination of these features to form a competitive or desirable AEM system.
3D ICs according to some embodiments of the invention could also enable electronic and semiconductor devices with a much higher performance due to the shorter interconnect as well as semiconductor devices with far more complexity via multiple levels of logic and providing the ability to repair or use redundancy. The achievable complexity of the semiconductor devices according to some embodiments of the invention could far exceed what may be practical with the prior art technology. These advantages could lead to more powerful computer systems and improved systems that have embedded computers.
Some embodiments of the invention may also enable the design of state of the art AEM systems at a greatly reduced non-recurring engineering (NRE) cost by the use of high density 3D FPGAs or various forms of 3D array based ICs with reduced custom masks as described in some inventive embodiments herein. These systems could be deployed in many products and in many market segments. Reduction of the NRE may enable new product family or application development and deployment early in the product lifecycle by lowering the risk of upfront investment prior to a market being developed. The above advantages may also be provided by various mixes such as reduced NRE using generic masks for layers of logic and other generic masks for layers of memories and building a very complex system using the repair technology to overcome the inherent yield limitation. Another form of mix could be building a 3D FPGA and add on it 3D layers of customizable logic and memory resulting in an end system that may have field programmable logic on top of the factory customized logic. There may be many ways to mix the many innovative elements herein to form a 3D IC to support the needs of an end system, including using multiple devices wherein more than one device incorporates elements of embodiments of the invention. An end system could benefit from memory devices utilizing embodiments of the invention of 3D memory together with high performance 3D FPGA together with high density 3D logic and so forth. Using devices that can use one or multiple elements according to some embodiments of the invention may allow for better performance or lower power and other illustrative advantages resulting from the use of some embodiments of the invention to provide the end system with a competitive edge. Such end system could be electronic based products or other types of medical systems that may include some level of embedded electronics, such as, for example, AEM devices that combine multi-function monitoring, multi drug dispensing, sophisticated power-saving telemetrics for communication, monitoring and control, etc.
AEM devices have been in use since the 1980s and have become part of our lives, moderating illnesses and prolonging life. A typical AEM system may include a logic processor, signal processor, volatile and non-volatile memory, specialized chemical, optical, and other sensors, specialized drug reservoirs and release mechanisms, specialized electrical excitation mechanisms, and radio frequency (RF) or acoustic receivers/transmitters. It may also include additional electronic and non-electronic sub-systems that may require additional processing resources to monitor and control, such as propulsion systems, immobilization systems, heating, ablation, etc.
Prior art such as U.S. Pat. No. 7,567,841 or U.S. Pat. No. 7,365,594 provide example descriptions of such autonomous in-vivo electronic medical devices and systems. It is understood that the use of specific component, device and/or parameter names described herein are for example only and not meant to imply any limitations on the invention. The invention may thus be implemented with different nomenclature/terminology utilized to describe the components/devices/parameters herein, without limitation. Each term utilized herein is to be given its broadest interpretation given the context in which that term is utilized. For example, as utilized herein, the following are generally defined:
AEM device: An Autonomous in-vivo Electronic Medical (AEM) device 19100, illustrated in
The sensing subsystem 19150 may include one or more of optical sensors, imaging cameras, biological or chemical sensors, as well as gravitational or magnetic ones. The therapy subsystem 19160 may include one or more of drug reservoirs, drug dispensers, drug refill ports, electrical or magnetic stimulation circuitry, and ablation tools. The power subsystem 19170 may include a battery and/or an RF induction pickup circuitry that allows remote powering and recharge of the AEM device. The antenna subsystem 19124 may include one or more antennae, operating either as an array or individually for distinct functions. The unique ID 191222 can operate through the communication controller 19120 as illustrated in
In addition to the above described hardware components of AEM device 19100, various features of the described embodiments may be completed/supported via software (or firmware) code or logic stored within program memory 19110 or other storage (e.g., data memory 19112) and executed by processor 19102 and signal processors 19104. Such software may be custom written for the device, or may include standard software components that are commercially available from software vendors.
One example of AEM device is a so-called “camera pill” that may be ingested by the patient and capture images of the digestive tract as it is traversed, and transmits the images to external equipment. Because such traversal may take an hour or more, a large number of images may need to be transmitted, possibly depleting its power source before the traversal through the digestive tract is completed. The ability to autonomously perform high quality image comparison and transmit only images with significant changes is important, yet often limited by the compute resources on-board the AEM device.
Another example of an AEM device is a retinal implant, which may have severe size limitations in order to minimize the device's interference with vision. Similarly, cochlear implants may also impose strict size limitations. Those size limitations may impose severe constraints on the computing power and functionality available to the AEM device.
Many AEM devices may be implanted within the body through surgical procedures, and replacing their power supply may require surgical intervention. There is a strong interest in extending the battery life as much as possible through lowering the power consumption of the AEM device.
Utilizing monolithic 3D IC technology described here and in related application Ser. Nos. 12/903,862, 12/903,847, 12/904,103 13/098,997, and 13/041,405 significant power, physical footprint, and cost could be saved. Many of the elements in AEM device 19100 could be integrated in one 3D IC. Some of these elements are mostly logic functions which could use, for example, RCAT transistors or Gate-Last transistors. Some of the AEM device 19100 elements may be storage devices and could be integrated on another 3D non-volatile memory device, such as, for example, 3D NAND as has been described herein. Alternatively the storage elements, for example, program memory 19110, data memory 19112 and non-volatile storage 19114, could be integrated on top of or under a logic layer or layers to reduce power and space. Communication controller 19120 could similarly utilize another layer of silicon optimized for RF. Specialized sensors can be integrated on substrates, such as InP or Ge, that may be a better fit for such devices. As more and more transistors might be integrated into high complexity 3D IC systems there might be a need to use elements of the inventions such as what are described herein as repair and redundancy methods and techniques to achieve good product yield.
Some of the external systems communication with AEM devices might also make use of some embodiments of the 3D IC invention including repair and redundancy to achieve good product yield for high complexity and large integration. Such large integration may reduce power and cost of the end product which may be attractive to end customers.
The 3D IC invention could be used to integrate many of these blocks into one or multiple devices. As various blocks get tightly integrated much of the power required to communicate between these elements may be reduced, and similarly, costs associated with these connections may be saved, as well as the space associated with the individual substrate and the associated connections. For AEM devices these may be very important competitive advantages. Some of these blocks might be better processed in a different process flow and or with a different substrate. For example, processor 19102 is a logic function that might use a logic process flow while the non-volatile storage 19114 might better be done using NAND Flash technology. An important advantage of some of the monolithic 3D embodiments of the invention may be to allow some of the layers in the 3D structure to be processed using a logic process flow while others might utilize a memory process flow, and then some other function such as, for example, the communication controller 19120 might use a high speed analog flow. Additionally, as those functions may be structured in one device on different layers, they could be very effectively be vertically interconnected.
To improve the contact resistance of very small scaled contacts, the semiconductor industry employs various metal silicides, such as, for example, cobalt silicide, titanium silicide, tantalum silicide, and nickel silicide. The current advanced CMOS processes, such as, for example, 45 nm, 32 nm, and 22 nm, employ nickel silicides to improve deep submicron source and drain contact resistances. Background information on silicides utilized for contact resistance reduction can be found in “NiSi Salicide Technology for Scaled CMOS,” H. Iwai, et. al., Microelectronic Engineering, 60 (2002), pp 157-169; “Nickel vs. Cobalt Silicide integration for sub-50 nm CMOS”, B. Froment, et. al., IMEC ESS Circuits, 2003; and “65 and 45-nm Devices—an Overview”, D. James, Semicon West, July 2008, ctr_024377. To achieve the lowest nickel silicide contact and source/drain resistances, the nickel on silicon can be heated to about 450° C.
Thus it may be desirable to enable low resistances for process flows in this document where the post layer transfer temperature exposures may remain under about 400° C. due to metallization, such as, for example, copper and aluminum, and low-k dielectrics being present.
For junction-less transistors (JLTs), in particular, forming contacts can be a challenge. This may be because the doping of JLTs should be kept low (below about 0.5-5×1019/cm3 or so) to enable good transistor operation but should be kept high (above about 0.5-5×1019/cm3 or so) to enable low contact resistance. A technique to obtain low contact resistance at lower doping values may therefore be desirable. One such embodiment of the invention may be by utilizing silicides with different work-functions for n type JLTs than for p type JLTs to obtain low resistance at lower doping values. For example, high work function materials, including, such materials as, Palladium silicide, may be used to make contact to p-type JLTs and lower work-function materials, including, such as, Erbium silicide, may be used to make contact to n-type JLTs. These types of approaches are not generally used in the manufacturing of planar inversion-mode MOSFETs. This may be due to separate process steps and increased cost for forming separate contacts to n type and p type transistors on the same device layer. However, for 3D integrated approaches where p-type JLTs may be stacked above n-type JLTs and vice versa, it can be not costly to form silicides with uniquely optimized work functions for n type and p type transistors. Furthermore, for JLTs where contact resistance may be an issue, the additional cost of using separate silicides for n type and p type transistors on the same device layer may be acceptable.
The example process flow shown below may form a Recessed Channel Array Transistor (RCAT) with low contact resistance, but this or similar flows may be applied to other process flows and devices, such as, for example, S-RCAT, JLT, V-groove, JFET, bipolar, and replacement gate flows.
A planar n-channel Recessed Channel Array Transistor (RCAT) with metal silicide source & drain contacts suitable for a 3D IC may be constructed. As illustrated in
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With the high density of layer to layer interconnection and the formation of memory devices & transistors that are enabled by embodiments in this document, novel FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) programming architectures and devices may be employed to create cost, area, and performance efficient 3D FPGAs. The pass transistor, or switch, and the memory device that may control the ON or OFF state of the pass transistor may reside in separate layers and may be connected by through layer vias (TLVs) to each other and the routing network metal lines, or the pass transistor and memory devices may reside in the same layer and TLVs may be utilized to connect to the network metal lines.
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The pass transistor, or switch, and the memory device that controls the ON or OFF state of the pass transistor may reside in the same layer and TLVs may be utilized to connect to the network metal lines. As illustrated in
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It may be desirable to construct 2DICs with regions or 3DICs with layers or strata that may be of dissimilar materials, such as, for example, mono-crystalline silicon based state of the art (SOA) CMOS circuits integrated with, on a 2DIC wafer or integrated in a 3DIC stack, InP optoelectronic circuits, such as, for example, sensors, imagers, displays. These dissimilar materials may include substantially different crystal materials, for example, mono-crystalline silicon and InP. This heterogeneous integration has traditionally been difficult and may result from the substrate differences. The SOA CMOS circuits may be typically constructed at state of the art wafer fabs on large diameter, such as 300 mm, silicon wafers, and the desired SOA InP technology may be made on 2 to 4 inch diameter InP wafers at a much older wafer fab.
A recessed channel transistor for logic circuits and logic regions may be formed monolithically atop a M3DDRAM-LSSAMML using the procedure shown in Step (1) to Step (5). The processes described in Step (1) to Step (5) do not expose the M3DDRAM-LSSAMML, and its associated metal bit lines 19814, to temperatures greater than about 400° C.
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
Many of the configurations described with
A procedure for constructing a monolithic 3D DRAM has thus been described, with (1) horizontally-oriented transistors, (2) some of the memory cell control lines—e.g., source-lines SL, constructed of heavily doped silicon and embedded in the memory cell layer, (3) side gates simultaneously deposited over multiple memory layers for transistors, and (4) monocrystalline (or single-crystal) silicon layers obtained by layer transfer techniques such as ion-cut. The transistors in the monocrystalline layer or layers may be horizontally oriented, i.e., current flowing in substantially the horizontal direction in transistor channels, substantially between drain and source, which may be parallel to the largest face of the substrate or wafer. The source and drain of the horizontally oriented transistors may be within the same monocrystalline layer. A transferred monocrystalline layer, such as n+ Silicon layer, may have a thickness of less than about 150 nm.
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
Over the past few years, the semiconductor industry has been actively pursuing floating-body RAM technologies as a replacement for conventional capacitor-based DRAM or as a replacement for embedded DRAM/SRAM. In these technologies, charge may be stored in the body region of a transistor instead of having a separate capacitor. This could have several potential advantages, including lower cost due to the lack of a capacitor, easier manufacturing and potentially scalability. There are many device structures, process technologies and operation modes possible for capacitor-less floating-body RAM. Some of these are included in “Floating-body SOI Memory: The Scaling Tournament”, Book Chapter of Semiconductor-On-Insulator Materials for Nanoelectronics Applications, pp. 393-421, Springer Publishers, 2011 by M. Bawedin, S. Cristoloveanu, A. Hubert, K. H. Park and F. Martinez (“Bawedin”).
A challenge of having a device work across a narrow range of voltages is illustrated with
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
Write voltages may be tuned based on temperature at which a floating body RAM chip may be operating. This temperature based adjustment of write voltages may be useful since required write currents may be a function of the temperature at which a floating body RAM device may be operating. Furthermore, different portions of the chip or die may operate at different temperatures in, for example, an embedded memory application. Another embodiment of the invention may involve modulating the write voltage for different parts of a floating body RAM chip based on the temperatures at which the different parts of a floating body RAM chip operate. Refresh can be performed more frequently or less frequently for the floating body RAM by using its temperature history. This temperature history may be obtained by many methods, including, for example, by having reference cells and monitoring charge loss rates in these reference cells. These reference cells may be additional cells placed in memory arrays that may be written with known data. These reference cells may then be read periodically to monitor charge loss and thereby determine temperature history.
In
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
Refresh may be a key constraint with conventional capacitor-based DRAM. Floating-body RAM arrays may require better refresh schemes than capacitor-based DRAM due to the lower amount of charge they may store. Furthermore, with an auto-refresh scheme, floating-body RAM may be used in place of SRAM for many applications, in addition to being used as an embedded DRAM or standalone DRAM replacement.
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
Other refresh schemes may be used for monolithic 3D DRAMs and for monolithic 3D floating-body RAMs similar to those described in US patent application 2011/0121366 and in
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
Persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrations in
Some embodiments of the invention may include alternative techniques to build IC (Integrated Circuit) devices including techniques and methods to construct 3D IC systems. Some embodiments of the invention may enable device solutions with far less power consumption than prior art. These device solutions could be very useful for the growing application of mobile electronic devices and mobile systems, such as, for example, mobile phones, smart phone, and cameras. For example, incorporating the 3D IC semiconductor devices according to some embodiments of the invention within these mobile electronic devices and mobile systems could provide superior mobile units that could operate much more efficiently and for a much longer time than with prior art technology.
Smart mobile systems may be greatly enhanced by complex electronics at a limited power budget. The 3D technology described in the multiple embodiments of the invention would allow the construction of low power high complexity mobile electronic systems. For example, it would be possible to integrate into a small form function a complex logic circuit with high density high speed memory utilizing some of the 3D DRAM embodiments of the invention and add some non-volatile 3D NAND charge trap or RRAM described in some embodiments of the invention. The need to reduce power to allow effective use of limited battery energy and also the lightweight and small form factor derived by highly integrating functions with low waste of interconnect and substrate could be highly benefitted by the redundancy and repair idea of the 3D monolithic technology as has been presented in embodiments of the invention. This unique technology could enable a mobile device that would be lower cost to produce or would require lower power to operate or would provide a lower size or lighter carry weight, and combinations of these 3D monolithic technology features may provide a competitive or desirable mobile system. 3D ICs according to some embodiments of the invention could enable electronic and semiconductor devices with much a higher performance as a result from the shorter interconnect as well as semiconductor devices with far more complexity via multiple levels of logic and providing the ability to repair or use redundancy. The achievable complexity of the semiconductor devices according to some embodiments of the invention could far exceed what may be practical with the prior art technology. These potential advantages could lead to more powerful computer systems and improved systems that have embedded computers.
Commercial wireless mobile communications have been developed for almost thirty years, and play a special role in today's information and communication technology Industries. The mobile wireless terminal device has become part of our life, as well as the Internet, and the mobile wireless terminal device may continue to have a more important role on a worldwide basis. Currently, mobile (wireless) phones are undergoing much development to provide advanced functionality. The mobile phone network is a network such as a GSM, GPRS, or WCDMA, 3G and 4G standards, and the network may allow mobile phones to communicate with each other. The base station may be for transmitting (and receiving) information to the mobile phone.
A typical mobile phone system may include, for example, a processor, a flash memory, a static random access memory, a display, a removable memory, a radio frequency (RF) receiver/transmitter, an analog base band (ABB), a digital base band (DBB), an image sensor, a high-speed bi-directional interface, a keypad, a microphone, and a speaker. A typical mobile phone system may include a multiplicity of an element, for example, two or more static random access memories, two or more displays, two or more RF receiver/transmitters, and so on.
Conventional radios used in wireless communications, such as radios used in conventional cellular telephones, typically may include several discrete RF circuit components. Some receiver architectures may employ superhetrodyne techniques. In a super heterodyne architecture an incoming signal may be frequency translated from its radio frequency (RF) to a lower intermediate frequency (IF). The signal at IF may be subsequently translated to baseband where further digital signal processing or demodulation may take place. Receiver designs may have multiple IF stages. The reason for using such a frequency translation scheme is that circuit design at the lower IF frequency may be more manageable for signal processing. It is at these IF frequencies that the selectivity of the receiver may be implemented, automatic gain control (AGC) may be introduced, etc.
A mobile phone's need of a high-speed data communication capability in addition to a speech communication capability has increased in recent years. In GSM (Global System for Mobile communications), one of European Mobile Communications Standards, GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) has been developed for speeding up data communication by allowing a plurality of time slot transmissions for one time slot transmission in the GSM with the multiplexing TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) architecture. EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution) architecture provides faster communications over GPRS.
4th Generation (4G) mobile systems aim to provide broadband wireless access with nominal data rates of 100 Mbit/s. 4G systems may be based on the 3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution) cellular standard, WiMax or Flash-OFDM wireless metropolitan area network technologies. The radio interface in these systems may be based on all-IP packet switching, MIMO diversity, multi-carrier modulation schemes, Dynamic Channel Assignment (DCA) and channel-dependent scheduling.
Prior art such as U.S. application Ser. No. 12/871,984 may provide a description of a mobile device and its block-diagram.
It is understood that the use of specific component, device and/or parameter names (such as those of the executing utility/logic described herein) are for example only and not meant to imply any limitations on the invention. The invention may thus be implemented with different nomenclature/terminology utilized to describe the components/devices/parameters herein, without limitation. Each term utilized herein is to be given its broadest interpretation given the context in which that term is utilized. For example, as utilized herein, the following terms are generally defined:
(1) Mobile computing/communication device (MCD): is a device that may be a mobile communication device, such as a cell phone, or a mobile computer that performs wired and/or wireless communication via a connected wireless/wired network. In some embodiments, the MCD may include a combination of the functionality associated with both types of devices within a single standard device (e.g., a smart phones or personal digital assistant (PDA)) for use as both a communication device and a computing device.
Some embodiments of the invention may include alternative techniques to build IC (Integrated Circuit) devices including techniques and methods to construct 3D IC systems. Some embodiments of the invention may enable device solutions with far less power consumption than prior art, or with more functionality in a smaller physical footprint. These device solutions could be very useful for the growing application of Autonomous in vivo Electronic Medical (AEM) devices and AEM systems such as ingestible “camera pills,” implantable insulin dispensers, implantable heart monitoring and stimulating devices, and the like. One such ingestible “camera pill” is the Philips' remote control “iPill”. For example, incorporating the 3D IC semiconductor devices according to some embodiments of the invention within these AEM devices and systems could provide superior autonomous units that could operate much more effectively and for a much longer time than with prior art technology. Sophisticated AEM systems may be greatly enhanced by complex electronics with limited power budget. The 3D technology described in many of the embodiments of the invention would allow the construction of a low power high complexity AEM system. For example it would be possible to integrate into a small form function a complex logic circuit with high density high speed memory utilizing some of the 3D DRAM embodiments herein and to add some non-volatile 3D NAND charge trap or RRAM described in embodiments herein. Also in another application 12/903,862 filed by some of the inventors and assigned to the same assignee a 3D micro display and a 3D image sensor are presented. Integrating one or both to complex logic and or memory could be very effective for retinal implants. Additional AEM systems could be customized to some specific market applications.
3D ICs according to some embodiments of the invention could also enable electronic and semiconductor devices with a much higher performance due to the shorter interconnect as well as semiconductor devices with far more complexity via multiple levels of logic and providing the ability to repair or use redundancy. The achievable complexity of the semiconductor devices according to some embodiments of the invention could far exceed what may be practical with the prior art technology. These advantages could lead to more powerful computer systems and improved systems that have embedded computers.
It will also be appreciated by persons of ordinary skill in the art that the invention is not limited to what has been particularly shown and described hereinabove. For example, drawings or illustrations may not show n or p wells for clarity in illustration. Moreover, transistor channels illustrated or discussed herein may include doped semiconductors, but may instead include undoped semiconductor material. Further, any transferred layer or donor substrate or wafer preparation illustrated or discussed herein may include one or more undoped regions or layers of semiconductor material. Rather, the scope of the invention includes both combinations and sub-combinations of the various features described herein above as well as modifications and variations which would occur to such skilled persons upon reading the foregoing description. Thus the invention is to be limited only by the appended claims.
This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/846,012, filed on Jun. 22, 2022, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/536,097, filed on Nov. 29, 2021, (now U.S. Pat. No. 11,521,888 issued on Dec. 6, 2022), which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/140,130, filed on Jan. 3, 2021 (now U.S. Pat. No. 11,211,279 issued on Dec. 28, 2021), which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/537,564, filed on Aug. 10, 2019, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/460,230, (now U.S. Pat. No. 10,497,713 issued on Dec. 3, 2019) filed on Mar. 16, 2017, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/821,683, (now U.S. Pat. No. 9,613,844 issued on Apr. 4, 2017) filed on Aug. 7, 2015, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/492,395, (now U.S. Pat. No. 9,136,153 issued on Sep. 15, 2015) filed on Jun. 8, 2012, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/273,712 (now U.S. Pat. No. 8,273,610 issued on Sep. 25, 2012) filed Oct. 14, 2011, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/016,313 (now U.S. Pat. No. 8,362,482 issued on Jan. 29, 2013) filed on Jan. 28, 2011, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/970,602, (now U.S. Pat. No. 9,711,407 issued on Jul. 18, 2017) filed on Dec. 16, 2010, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/949,617, (now U.S. Pat. No. 8,754,533 issued on Jun. 17, 2014) filed on Nov. 18, 2010. The contents of the foregoing applications are incorporated herein by reference.
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