Fundamentals of Modern VLSI

Devices and Fabrication

History and Evolution of VLSI Technology
Chronology of Major milestones in the development of VLSI

• 1940---First Bipolar Transistor

• 1958--- First IC Invented

• 1960--- First MOSFET invented

• 1963---First CMOS invented

• 1971--- Microprocessor

• 1980 onwards VLSI Era

 Bipolar Transistors

• Transistors have been used basically for

amplification and also as a switch.
• Bipolar Transistors were invented in the year
1947 by William Shockly.
• The term Transistor is derived from “Transfer
Resistor”
• The invention of transistor had a large impact in
the field of Electronics and also has led to many
other inventions.
• This development has resulted into a sustained
growth leading to VLSI.
 Integrated Circuit(IC)
• An electronic circuit formed on a small piece of
semiconducting material, which performs the same
function as a larger circuit made from discrete
components.
• First Integrated Circuit(1959, By JACK KILBY)
 MOSFETS and CMOS
• In the year 1960 to 70 n-channel MOSFET and p-Channel
MOSFET were available separately.
• These were suffered with some limitations.
• Slow in operation
• Higher layout density
• Large standby power dissipation
• Advantages:
• Fabrication process was very simple
• Requires single doping
• Then level of integration had been enhanced to
accommodate both p-channel and n-channel on a single
chip called as Complementary MOS Technology.

• CMOS is the complementary metal oxide semiconductor

and is the technology to construct the integrated circuits
used in microprocessors, microcontrollers, static RAM and
other digital logic circuits.
 Continued.... MOSFET and CMOS
• The MOSFET made out of CMOS Technology
offered advantages such as
• Low standby power dissipation
• The active power dissipates only during switching
activities.
• In spite of having been integrating more
number of components on a chip the
limitation was not a problem of heat
dissipation and is still air cooled.
 Scale of Integration
• Small scale integration circuit: <100 compo.
• Medium scale integration circuit: <500 compo.
• Large scale integration circuit: 500-300K compo.
• Very large scale integration circuit:>300K compo.
• Ultra Large scale integration circuit:>1500K.
The worlds smallest chip is developed by Hitachi
 Challenges in Integration
• Higher Circuit Speed
• Lower power dissipation
• Higher packaging density
• Miniaturization
Trends in lithographic feature size and
number of transistors per chip for DRAM and
Microprocessor chips.
• The earlier trend of Bipolar transistors faded away after
CMOS transistors were made available.
• The usage of Bipolar has been confined to only where
raw circuit speed makes an important difference.
• Further, progress in the process of chip manufacturing
has enabled to reduce the chip size, pack more
components in same chip area led to exponential growth
in the semiconductor industry.
• If the size of the silicon device is reduced the speed
increases and cost reduces.
• Present transistors are 20 times more faster and occupy
less than 1% of the area of those built years ago.
 Continued.....
• The DRAM have characteristically highest
component count of any IC.
• It is because of Small size of one transistor
memory cell.
Modern CMOS Transistors
Modern Bipolar n-p-n Transistor