SEMICONDUCTORS
Shaping the Digital Future

ORNL's work helped industry produce semiconductor chips for computers economically.

Over the past four decades ORNL researchers provided key information and technologies that sparked the growth and improved the economics of the semiconductor industry.

In 1962 Ordean Oen and Mark Robinson, while conducting theoretical research on radiation damage in crystalline materials, ran computer simulations that revealed the ion channeling effectthe long-range motion of atoms parallel to long rows of atoms in the solid. This work and energetic ion-channeling experiments by Thomas Noggle, Bill Appleton, Charles Moak, Sheldon Datz, Herb Krause, and others enabled understanding of channeling phenomena, helping industry produce ion-implanted semiconductor materials with the right properties.

In the 1960s, using the Bulk Shielding Reactor, John Cleland and other ORNL scientists devised a neutron transmutation doping (NTD) method for uniformly distributing phosphorus ions in silicon. More than 100 tons of NTD silicon are produced worldwide each year for use in electronic components.

By combining accelerator-based ion- implantation doping and laser annealing, Rosa Young, C.W. White, and Greg Clarke introduced boron ions into the near surface of a silicon crystal and incorporated them into electrically active sites, while removing all displacement damage in the silicon lattice. This work provided the foundation for the development of rapid thermal annealing, a process widely used in the semiconductor industry.

In 1998 Ken Tobin and associates built two award-winning software tools that help companies rapidly identify manufacturing problems that cause semiconductor wafer defects, thus reducing defect generation, increasing product yield, and cutting costs. These tools have been licensed to Applied Materials, IBM, Motorola, Texas Instruments, and 20 other companies.

ORNL's award-winning direct-to-digital holography process transferred to nLine rapidly finds small defects in deep-lying contacts and trenches in wafers. Tony Moore and associates invented a sensor-based system to control radiofrequency power that produces plasmas for etching wafer circuit patterns. Use of ORNL's system has saved the industry millions of dollars.

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