The semiconductor industry is running towards a nano-scale wall. For decades electronics have become smaller, faster and smarter. Today, a chip’s transistors are so densely packed and tiny that manufacturers are forced to build and design complex 3D architectures, at the nanometer scale, just to keep up with Moore’s Law.
Discover how Atom Probe Tomography is driving the development and of these next-generation chips.
Atom probe data set obtained from a thin Ni0.5Al0.5 film, an intermetallic compound that is investigated in the context of alternative metallization schemes for advanced interconnect applications. Surface oxidation and oxygen incorporation in the film is visualized by a 10 at% oxygen iso-concentration surface (middle). A 2D Ni-concentration map reveals undesired, off-stoichiometric compositional fluctuations at the nanoscale and near microstructural features (left). Segregation of silicon atoms into grain boundaries of the Ni0.5Al0.5 film near the SiO2 substrate interface is observed in the 2D atom map (right). (Image: imec.)
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