Future Trends in Microelectronics
Up the Nanocreek
Chapter One
Microelectronics Technology:
Challenges in the 21st Century
S. M. Sze
National Nano Device Laboratory
National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C.
1. Introduction
The earliest semiconductor device was the metal-semiconductor contact studied in
1874 to reveal that the resistance of a contact between a metal and a semiconductor
depends on the magnitude and polarity of the applied voltage. The
earliest technology related to semiconductor processing was the lithography
technique invented in 1798. In this process, the pattern, or image, was transferred
from a stone plate (litho).
In the past two centuries, the most important milestones in semiconductor
development were the inventions of the bipolar transistor in 1947 and the
integrated circuit in 1959. The bipolar transistor ushered in the modern
electronics era and the integrated circuit laid the foundation for the rapid growth of
the microelectronics industry. In the past four decades, there has been
phenomenal progre ... read full excerpt from Future Trends in Microelectronics: Up the Nano Creek ebook
