LIQUID-PHASE TRANSMISSION ELECTRON MICROSCOPY AS A METROLOGY PLATFORM FOR DEVELOPING FUTURE VERTICAL TRANSISTORS

Abstract

The continued scaling of transistors has impacted our lives in a positive way. However, as the transistors and the derived electronic components become smaller and enter the sub-10 nm length scales, further shrinking is challenging and a shift to a new scalable architecture is required. One such promising architecture is a densely packed array of vertical nanowire based gate-all-around transistors that can provide superior electrostatic control and larger integration density. However, precise fabrication of these densely packed nanowires brings new challenges. During the fabrication process, these nanowires are exposed to liquids multiple times which causes mechanical damage (pattern collapse) to these nanowires. Here, we use the liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy (TEM) platform to directly visualize the interaction of these nanowires with liquids in real-time at high spatial and temporal resolution and find that pattern collapse happens at the drying stage of a wet process.