Superconducting Technology Assessment - nitrd
Superconducting Technology Assessment - nitrd
Superconducting Technology Assessment - nitrd
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Ground Plane<br />
Counter/B arrier/Base Electrodes<br />
Resistor<br />
Resistor<br />
Wire 3<br />
Plug<br />
Passivation<br />
Silicon Substrate<br />
Wires, Ground Plane, Plugs<br />
Oxide<br />
Passivation<br />
Wire 2<br />
Ground Plane<br />
Figure 4-4. Notional cross-section of the superconductive IC chip fabrication process illustrating salient features of an advanced process,<br />
which includes four interconnect levels, planarization, and plugs.<br />
The leap to gate densities and feature sizes needed for petaflops cannot be achieved in a single step. Sequential<br />
improvements will be needed, commensurate with the funding available for the process tools and facilities.<br />
Semiconductor technology has scaled by a factor of 0.7x in feature size and 2.5x in gate density for each generation,<br />
each of which has taken about three years and a substantial capital investment. However, much of the delay in<br />
advancing semiconductor IC chip technology was due to the lack of advanced process tools, especially in the area<br />
of photolithography. The panel expects to achieve 0.8 µm junction sizes in the next generation, because the tools<br />
and methodologies are already available. In fact, NGST, in collaboration with JPL, demonstrated a 0.8 µm junctionbased<br />
circuit fabrication process and was on the way to adopting it as standard when its Nb foundry closed in 2004.<br />
Further reduction in feature size and other process improvements will occur in subsequent generations.<br />
4.5.2 IC CHIP MANUFACTURE – DEVICE AND CIRCUIT SPEED<br />
Wire 1<br />
RSFQ gate speed is ultimately limited by the temporal width of the quantized pulses. For junctions with critical<br />
current I c and resistance R, this width is proportional to Φ 0/I cR, where Φ 0=2.07mV-ps is the superconducting flux<br />
quantum. The maximum operating frequency of the simplest RSFQ gate, a static divider , is f 0 =I cR/Φ 0. Maximum<br />
speed requires near-critical junction damping, with 2πf 0RC ~ 1, where C is the junction capacitance. Then f 0 =<br />
(J c/2πΦ 0C’) 1/2 , where J c and C’ are the critical current density and specific capacitance, respectively. These parameters<br />
depend only on the thickness of the tunnel barrier. Because C’ varies only weakly with barrier thickness, while J c varies<br />
exponentially, f 0 is approximately proportional to J c 1/2 .<br />
Plug<br />
85