Preface

Abstract

Despite the fact that a range of limitations are beginning to appear as CMOS technology is being raised to ever higher levels of perfection, it is anticipated that silicon will be the dominant material of the semiconductor industry for at least the first half of the 21st century. The forecast for microelectronics development published in 2006 by SIA (Semiconductor Industry Association) reaches ahead to the years 2014-2020. Moreover, a comparison with former SIA forecasts indicates that they become more aggressive (that is more optimistic) with time.
While the development of silicon microelectronics in the past could be attributed mostly to the reduction of the feature size (progress in lithography), today it relies more on new material solutions, such as SOI, SON, SiGe or SiC. The combination of this trend with continuous miniaturization provides the opportunity of improving IC functionality and speed of operation. (...)