Special issue on advanced microelectronics technologies

Driven by the ever-increasing market demands in computing, communication, and multimedia applications, the microelectronics industry has got rapid development recently.

Because of innovations and advancements at almost every technological level, such as material, process, equipment, device, circuit and system, silicon-based logic and memory IC technologies continue to be the industry's R&D focus with nano-scaled scaling.

This gives a strong boost to the traditional “Moore's Law”, which keeps on increasing the function density while reducing the cost per function in an IC and brings the R&D activities to a new level known as “More Moore”. At the same time, a new trend in microelectronic industry, namely “More than Moore”, has expanded the scope of IC applications by integrating non-digital functionalities into traditional CMOS micro-systems, thus enabling the deployment of innovative product solutions required by modern information world.

As the abovementioned amazing progress of microelectronics ongoing, the editorial board of SCIENCE CHINA: Information Sciences was highly motivated to publish a special issue to highlight the current developments within this exciting field. This special issue covers the advances in state-of-the-art development, grand challenges, innovative solutions, and broad scope of microelectronic technologies related to both “More Moore” and “More than Moore”. The issue contains 14 invited papers from both industry (e.g., Intel, IBM, Applied Material, Macronix, etc.) and academic (e.g., Yale University, Peking University, UCLA, CEA-Leti, etc.), as the following:

• The driving force for development of IC and system in future: Reducing the power consumption and improving the ratio of performance to power consumption (invited)

• Variability in nanoscale CMOS technology

• Advanced strain engineering for state-of-the-art nanoscale CMOS technology

• Next-generation lithography for 22 and 16 nm technology nodes and beyond

• Inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy (IETS) study of high-k gate dielectrics

• Ultra-thin films and multigate devices architectures for future CMOS scaling
• Si nanowire FET and its modeling
• 3D integration review
• FR/wireless-interconnect: The next wave of connectivityy
• State-of-the-art flash memory devices and post-flash emerging memories
• Phase change memory
• Resistance switching for RRAM applications
• High power devices in wide bandgap semiconductors
• Low power 3.1-10.6 GHz IR-UWB transmitter for Gbps wireless communications