[paper] The Future Transistors

Wei Cao, Huiming Bu, Maud Vinet, Min Cao, Shinichi Takagi, Sungwoo Hwang, Tahir Ghani

and Kaustav Banerjee

The future transistors

Nature vol. 620, pp. 501–515 (2023)

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06145-x

Abstract: The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), a core element of complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology, represents one of the most momentous inventions since the industrial revolution. Driven by the requirements for higher speed, energy efficiency and integration density of integrated-circuit products, in the past six decades the physical gate length of MOSFETs has been scaled to sub-20 nanometres. However, the downscaling of transistors while keeping the power consumption low is increasingly challenging, even for the state-of-the-art fin field-effect transistors. Here we present a comprehensive assessment of the existing and future CMOS technologies, and discuss the challenges and opportunities for the design of FETs with sub-10-nanometre gate length based on a hierarchical framework established for FET scaling. We focus our evaluation on identifying the most promising sub-10-nanometre-gate-length MOSFETs based on the knowledge derived from previous scaling efforts, as well as the research efforts needed to make the transistors relevant to future logic integrated-circuit products. We also detail our vision of beyond-MOSFET future transistors and potential innovation opportunities. We anticipate that innovations in transistor technologies will continue to have a central role in driving future materials, device physics and topology, heterogeneous vertical and lateral integration, and computing technologies.

FIG: The history of transistor technology.

Acknowledgements: K.B. acknowledges support from the Army Research Office (grant W911NF1810366), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (grant FA9550-18-1-0448), the Japan Science and Technology Agency CREST Program (grant SB180064) and the National Science Foundation (grant CCF 2132820). K.B. thanks the following individuals for their selfless support during the organization of the collaboration: T. Ernst, CEA-LETI, Grenoble, France; T. Sakurai, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan; J. Welser, IBM Almaden Research Centre, San Jose, USA. K.B. also thanks S. Oda, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ōokayama, Japan, for useful discussions.