Adelmo Ortiz-Conde

We review the origins, evolution and present status of MOSFETs, which has been the dominant semiconductor device in electronics applications for more than 4 decades. The conceptual invention of MOSFET, by Lilienfeld in 1928, and the end of World War II, in 1945, inspired Bell Labs to research into semiconductors. Bardeen and Brattain, who were working in the Semiconductor Sub-Group at Bell Labs, fabricated the first point contact transistor in December,1947. This achievement motivated Shockley, who was the group leader, to invent the bipolar junction transistor in January 1948. Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley received the Nobel Prize in 1956 “for their discovery of the transistor effect.” After solving oxide reliability problems, the MOSFET was fabricated in 1960 by Kahng and Atalla. The invention of CMOS, by Wanlass and Sah in 1963, made the MOSFET to be the most commonly used device in digital applications. The transistors have been miniaturized for more than fifty years, following Moore’s Law from 1965, and they are now approaching their final limits in the nanometer regime. Recent innovations, such as strained silicon and high-k metal gates are being used in modern MOSFETs. New device designs as FinFETS, Nanowire and Nanosheet are now being fabricated.

Biography:

Adelmo Ortiz-Conde (S’82, M’85, SM’97) was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on November 28, 1956. He received the professional Electronics Engineer degree from Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB), Caracas, Venezuela, in 1979 and the M.E. and Ph.D. from the University of Florida, Gainesville, in 1982 and 1985, respectively. His doctoral research, under the guidance of Prof. J. G. Fossum, was on the Effects of Grain boundaries in SOI MOSFET’s.