BACKGROUND

The semiconductor manufacturing industry has experienced exponential growth over the last several decades. In the course of semiconductor evolution, the minimum feature size for semiconductor devices has decreased over time, thereby helping to increase the number of semiconductor devices per unit area on successive generations of integrated circuits (ICs). This device “shrinkage” allows engineers to pack more devices and more corresponding functionality onto newer generations of ICs, and is consequently one of the underlying drivers of the modern digital age. Another advancement that has helped improve the functionality of ICs in recent years has been to replace traditional polysilicon gates with metal gates.

