Reliability Issues for
Advanced Silicon Technologies

Silicon technology evolution continues at an increasing pace. The need for improved circuit performance and ever-higher levels of circuit integration necessitate aggressive feature size scaling and the introduction into the manufacturing environment of novel materials. In the process, existing materials are being pushed to their physical and electrical limits while the long-term implications of the use of newer materials are not fully understood. One of the major concerns for future technology development is the maintenance of the high level of reliability that the industry has attained. This course will provide an overview of the major silicon - related reliability issues for advanced semiconductor technologies. The emphasis of this course will be on the physical understanding of failure modes relevant to the advanced transistor structures and new materials used in the latest generations of silicon integrated circuit technology.

Oates, Anthony S.

Tony Oates received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Reading, U.K. in 1985. He then joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in Allentown, PA as a post-doctoral member of technical staff, where his research focused on defects in silicon crystals. In 1987 he joined the VLSI technology development laboratory of AT&T Bell Laboratories and since then he has studied failure mechanisms in CMOS technologies. He is currently a member of the technology development organization of Agere Systems (formerly the Microelectronics Division of Lucent Technologies), where he is a technical manager with responsibility for technology reliability. He has published over 70 papers in the areas of interconnect and circuit reliability. He is a member of the management committee of the International Reliability Physics Symposium, serving as the symposium General Chair in 2001. He is currently the editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability. He is also involved in paper selection activities for the International Electron Device Meeting. He has edited 2 conference proceedings on microelectronics materials reliability for the Materials Research Society.