The rapid progress and growth which has been made in the semiconductor industry over the past decade has been due to the improvements in processes and equipment to manufacture integrated circuits. The most significant factor in the evolution of I.C.'s has been the increasing miniaturization of semiconductor devices. The reason for making circuits smaller is quite simple: If critical dimensions are cut in two, a fourfold increase in the number of devices per square area is achieved. As Figure 1 indicates, as the dimensions of a device are reduced, the power required per function decreases; the interelectrode capacitance decreases; and the frequency response improves. The cost of I.C.'s per function has steadily decreased over the past decade, and this is due to the increased packing density by the further miniaturization of the integrated circuit components. However, this rapid growth in microelectronics is being threatened by the photolithographic limit imposed by the wavelength of light.

Date Published: 1 March 1974
PDF: 5 pages
Proc. SPIE 0055, Technological Advances in Micro and Submicro Photofabrication Imagery, (1 March 1974); doi: 10.1117/12.954260

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0055:
Technological Advances in Micro and Submicro Photofabrication Imagery
William Converse; J. M. Graf, Editor(s)