A 2 million transistor digital processor with 120 nm gates fabricated by 248 nm wavelength phase shift technology

Abstract Alternating phase shift technology has been shown to substantially improve focus latitude and resolution for several years. However, the use of phase shift masks to improve the process latitude in gate level lithography has been hindered by the lack of commercially available tools that can convert conventional gate layouts into phase shift mask patterns. A software package has recently become available that allows a user to create phase shift masks to reduce the gate length of features in existing circuit layouts. A digital signal processing chip with 2 million gates has been used as a test vehicle to evaluate the feasibility of phase shifting and processing a large number of devices in a complete circuit. Three wafer lots have been processed with a target feature size of 120 nm with a variation of 25 nm 3σ. The timing circuits of the chips have been tested; those with 120 nm gates showed a nearly fourfold improvement in speed when compared to 240 nm gate circuits at 1 volt operation.