EEL 5091 – Introductory Quantum Mechanics for Nanodevices Final Project Proposal 7 March 2007 Antonio Acosta Casey

Overview of Strained Silicon Technology With its physical limitations already in sight, industry and academic microelectronics research has been focused on developing new technologies to extend Moore’s Law. One of these viable technologies is strained silicon. The attractiveness of strained-Si is that it increases carrier mobility, can be easily integrated into current manufacturing processes, and is a low-cost technology. As a result, there is a lot of ongoing research dedicated strained silicon technology at both the academic and industrial level. In fact, beginning with the 90nm node, Intel began to implement strained silicon technology into their microprocessors and other chipmakers have begun to follow suit.