Special Section Guest Editorial: Advanced Plasma-Etch Technology

Plasma etch technology is an integral and indispensible part of patterning technology that has enabled continuous scaling in the semiconductor industry for more than forty years. Advancement in plasma-etch technology, along with other semiconductor process technologies, has brought the state-of-the-art semiconductor technology, the so-called 22 nm node of complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology, into mass production. This 22 nm node CMOS technology features a three-dimensional (3-D) FinFET, a metal one pitch of about 90 nm and copper/low-k interconnects. The next generation of 14 nm node CMOS technology is expected to be brought into mass production in the first quarter of 2014.