KIOXIA

Prashant Nagapurkar, P. Nandy, Sachin U. Nimbalkar

The growth of the information and communication technology sector has vastly accelerated in recent decades because of advancements in digitalization and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions data of the top six semiconductor manufacturing companies (Samsung Electronics, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, Micron, SK Hynix, Kioxia, and Intel) were gathered from the publicly accessible Carbon Disclosure Project’s (CDP) website for 2020. Scope 3 emissions had the largest share in total annual emissions with an average share of 52%, followed by Scope 2 (32%) and Scope 1 (16%). Because of the absence of a standardized methodology for Scope 3 emissions estimation, each company used different methodologies that resulted in differences in emissions values. An analysis of the CDP reporting data did not reveal information on strategies implemented by companies to reduce Scope 3 emissions. The use of renewable energy certificates had the largest effect on decarbonization centered on reducing Scope 2 emissions, followed by the deployment of perfluorocarbon reduction technologies to help reduce Scope 1 fugitive emissions. Technology-specific marginal abatement costs of CO2 were also estimated and varied between −416 and 12,215 USD/t CO2 eq., which primarily varied depending on the technology deployed.

Jeong-Eun Choe

DRAM cell scaling down to the 14 nm design rule (D/R) has already been productized by major DRAM players such as Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. They’re developing n+1 (12~13 nm) and n+2 (11 nm or beyond) so-called D1b (D1β), D1c (D1γ), and D1d (D1δ) or even D0a generation now, which means DRAM cell D/R might be able to further scale down to single digit nm with EUVL adoption for DRAM cell/core patterning. The cell design scaling down is getting slower due to many scaling issues including patterning, leakage, and sensing margin. Major DRAM players have applied EUVL masks (such as SS_BLP/H_SC2) on DRAM and will expand it for the next generation. Current 6F2 cell architecture with 1T+1C will be moving over to 4F2 or 3D DRAM in an 8~9 nm D/R DRAM generation due to scaling limitations, which will be D0b or D0c. Although they change to 3D DRAM with a little relaxed CDs, EUVL will be a must for the performance and yield improvement (defects) in DRAM core areas such as very dense WLD and SA patterns just near the cell array. HKMG DRAM process has been adopted on Graphic DRAM and advanced DDR5 DRAM products by Samsung and Micron, although etching and high-k engineering are different for each. Major NAND manufacturers are still in the race to increase the number of vertical 3D NAND gates, they all have already introduced their own 176L/232L/238L 3D NAND devices. Samsung V-NAND, KIOXIA/WDC BiCS, Intel FG CuA, Micron CTF CuA, SK Hynix 4D PUC, and YMTC Xtacking 3D NAND products are the mainstream for SSD and mobile storage applications. Many innovative processes and designs have been adopted, however, lots of challenges are still there to overcome. Although lithography burdens were reduced by changing 2D to 3D, instead, UHAR etching/cleaning/filling-related developments are ongoing. Micron already exited XPoint memory, and Intel is winding it down as well. For SCM applications, fast NAND and some Emerging Memory (EM) devices such as Z-NAND, XL-FLASH, and STT-MRAM will cover the market needs in the future. Due to the difficulties of the EM materials etching, they’re currently limited to embedded and low-density applications only. We’ll discuss current and future challenges on DRAM, 3D NAND, and Emerging memory including process, design, and materials.

M. Nojima

Ion beams have many applications. Junior Associate Professor Masahi Nojima, Research Institute of Science and Technology at the Tokyo University of Science, Japan, is working to create a new generation of ion beams. Already, he has successfully developed new techniques for producing focused ion beams (FIB). In his most recent work, Nojima has developed a metallic solution ion source that will be used to construct unknown functional materials by using ion beams made up of specific elements. The metallic solution ion source can generate a copy of an original structure using elementally selected materials. With support from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), KAKENHI, the academic incentive system of the KIOXIA Corporation 2021 and the Toshiba Electric Devices & Storage Corporation 2021, Nojima is seeking to open up new materials for use as ion sources utilising electrospray ionisation (ESI) methods. By harnessing the elements of FIBs primarily created from liquid metal ion source (LMIS) by field ionisation processes, Nojima hopes to create new generations of ion beams. To date, he and the team have displayed the result of mass separating metallic ion solution ion beams on random conditions and, looking ahead, intend to estimate the stopping range of mass selected ion beams in solid materials.

R. Orihara

In semiconductor manufacturing, major issues include automation of the operation, expansion of the production scale, and cost reduction and competitiveness enhancement by means of quality control. On Kioxia's production sites, a vast amount of data is collected from automated production lines. AI technologies are being applied to the data in order to implement information systems capable of quality monitoring and problem solving, which helps us keep high product quality. In this paper, three case studies of AI technology applications are reported. The first two cases are from the production stage, one being an application to yield analysis, and another being an application to defect inspection. The last case is from the design stage, an application to the topography simulation. On the other hand, the creation of artwork is a rapidly emerging field for the AI application. TEZUKA2020, a project in which AI and human collaboratively tried to produce a new piece of manga by the legendary Japanese artist Osamu Tezuka, was recently carried out as an ad campaign to promote Kioxia's corporate name. The project is briefly reported in this paper.