FinFET

FinFETs

A double-gate FinFET device.

An SOI FinFET MOSFET

The term FinFET was coined by University of California, Berkeley researchers (Profs. Chenming Hu, Tsu-Jae King-Liu and Jeffrey Bokor) to describe a nonplanar, double-gate transistor built on an SOI substrate,^[10] based on the earlier DELTA (single-gate) transistor design.^[11] The distinguishing characteristic of the FinFET is that the conducting channel is wrapped by a thin silicon "fin", which forms the body of the device. The thickness of the fin (measured in the direction from source to drain) determines the effective channel length of the device.

In current usage the term FinFET has a less precise definition. Among microprocessor manufacturers, AMD, IBM, and Motorola describe their double-gate development efforts as FinFET development whereas Intel avoids using the term to describe their closely related tri-gate architecture.^[12] In the technical literature, FinFET is used somewhat generically to describe any fin-based, multigate transistor architecture regardless of number of gates.

A 25-nm transistor operating on just 0.7 Volt was demonstrated in December 2002 by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. The "Omega FinFET" design is named after the similarity between the Greek letter omega (Ω) and the shape in which the gate wraps around the source/drain structure. It has a gate delay of just 0.39 picosecond (ps) for the N-type transistor and 0.88 ps for the P-type.

FinFET can also have two electrically independent gates, which gives circuit designers more flexibility to design with efficient, low-power gates.^[13]

In 2012, Intel started using FinFETs for its future commercial devices. Recent leaks suggest that Intel's FinFET shape has an unusual shape of a triangle rather than rectangle and it is speculated that this might be either because a triangle has a higher structural strength and can be more reliably manufactured or because a triangular prism has a higher area to volume ratio than a rectangular prism thus increasing switching performance.^[14]

In September 2012, GlobalFoundries announced plans to offer a 14-nanometer process technology featuring FinFET three-dimensional transistors in 2014.^[15] The next month, the rival company TSMC, announced start early or "risk" production of 16 nm FinFETS in November 2013.