[Music] My first job at high tech was operating one of these investigating the transistor the microscopic invention that has powered computing for decades. It is here that I learned to truly appreciate how incredible this technology is when you can see for yourself just how tiny they really are learn how they work and how they are made and watch how much they have changed and evolved over so many years. You really do start to feel that they are indistinguishable from magic. It's often said that the transistor is the greatest invention of the 20th century a simple little switch you apply energy to a gate which turns off or on the current flow through the channel underneath electrons flow and ones and zeros are made [Music]. The distance the electrons had to travel was originally how we measured these planar transistors [Music]. We made improvements by shortening that distance through shrinking dimensions first [Music]. We added new layers that improved control and speed different wavelengths of light were used to print smaller and smaller gates.

resulting in faster and faster transistors that consumed less space and power. And as these transistors shrank, we were able to fit more and more onto each die. In these early days, we were limited by needing wide insulating gaps in between each transistor, but an innovation allowed us to create trench isolation so the gap could shrink further. [Music] By this point, the wires that brought power in and moved signals around had grown from a single layer on top to six layers in order to feed all the small transistors. And we switched from aluminum to copper so they were more conductive. Other new materials were added to further thin the tiny layer above the channel to increase efficiency and reduce leaking energy issues. We also found ways to make the electrons move faster through the silicon channel by straining its crystal structure, perhaps the only time when stress made things go faster and better. A new smaller wavelength light source helped print ever smaller lines, whilst another new material for the channel helped increase transistor speeds. That was soon followed by even more

radical material changes a new insulating material between the conductors, and the replacement of the polysilicon gate material with a combined metal high-k gate structure that was better at limiting costly leakage currents. By now, the laser light source wasn't able to print lines any smaller. The features were smaller than the wavelength itself. Water immersion that refracted the light allowed finer-grained printing to continue. A radical innovation was needed to control leakage from the electron channel. This innovation would transform the planar transistor from 2D to 3D, reducing the importance of gate length as a primary metric in this finFET design. Multiple electron channels emerge from the substrate, and the gate wraps around them. This allows for greater control over the current. Transistor node names, long tied to the two-dimensional gate length, now reflect a range of new factors, including smaller features as well as new processes and technologies. [Music] We improved upon this new structure so it occupied less space and consumed even less power, but as we continued to shrink, our laser light source reached its

limits, even with water immersion, so we had to resort to incredibly complex patterning techniques to fabricate these now minuscule devices. [Music] Devices so tiny that they are a mere fraction of the size as compared to when we started this journey, with now more than 19 layers of wires above them. Billions upon billions of transistors like these are powering this generation of computing devices. The insatiable demand for ever smaller transistors requires new technological marvels, new printing techniques like extreme ultraviolet lithography, entirely new structures, and new materials are being deployed to meet this need. That's the exciting story of the innovation of the transistor, a story of scale, a story of magic, and a story we're still writing here at Intel. [Music] You

Evolution of Transistor Innovation | Intel Technology

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