Transistor Structure

TSMC CMOS logic technology relied on planar transistor structures until 2014, when FinFETs were introduced into production with our 16nm technology. The FinFET structure resolved a fundamental limitation of planar device scaling, namely the poor electrostatic control of the channel at short gate lengths. FinFETs also enabled a partial decoupling of the transistor density scaling from device effective width scaling, which is an important feature for attaining increased transistor current per unit footprint of transistors. These FinFET characteristics enabled significant reduction of the power supply voltage as compared to planar transistors. FinFET also presents new degrees of freedom for power performance optimization, which contributed to significant enhancements in energy efficiency from 16nm to our most recently introduced 5nm technology node.

TSMC research and development continues to explore next-generation structures such as stacked nanowires or stacked nanosheets in our quest for new heights in computing performance and energy efficiency for future technology nodes.

  • 5nm CMOS Production Technology Platform featuring full-fledged EUV, and High Mobility Channel FinFETs with densest 0.021um2 SRAM cells for Mobile SoC and High Performance Computing Applications

    2019
    A leading edge 5nm CMOS platform technology has been defined and optimized for mobile and HPC applications. This industry-leading 5nm technology features, for the first time, full-fledged EUV, and high mobility channel (HMC) finFETs with densest 0.021μm 2 HD SRAM. This true 5nm CMOS platform technology is a full node scaling from our successful 7nm node [4] in offering ~1.84x logic density, 15% speed gain or 30% power reduction. The 5nm platform technology successfully passed qualification [3] with consistently high yielding 256Mb HD/HC SRAM, and large logic test chip consisting of CPU/GPU/SoC blocks. Currently in risk production, this true 5nm platform technology is on schedule for high volume production in 1H 2020. authors: Geoffrey Yeap, S. S. Lin, Y. M. Chen, H. L. Shang, P. W. Wang, H. C. Lin, Y. C. Peng, J. Y. Sheu, M. Wang, X. Chen, B. R. Yang, C. P. Lin, F. C. Yang, Y. K. Leung, D. W. Lin, C. P. Chen, K. F. Yu, D. H. Chen, C. Y. Chang, H. K. Chen, P. Hung, C. S. Hou, Y. K. Cheng, J. Chang, L. Yuan, C. K. Lin, C. C. Chen, Y. C. Yeo, M. H. Tsai, H. T. Lin