Enhanced Transisitor Lifetime Through Deuterium Processing

Animation Produced by Members of the Imaging Technology Group
Research by Joesph Lyding & Karl Hess

Click above to view a 14MB MPEG

About the Animation

A prime example of the type of output that can be produced in the VMIL, the 'Deuterium Video' (as it has become commonly called) illustrates the effects of hydrogen passivation on a layer of silicon. While only 1:18 in length, it took several people several weeks to produce, using practically the full extent of the VMIL facilities.

The molecular model of silicon and silcon dioxide was built using Cerius2, a molecular modeling/simulation program available on our SGI and AIX machines. This data was then imported into Softimage 3D, a 3D animation/modeling program. Importation was done using a utility called mol2soft, written by former members of our staff, including Chris Trimble and Joe Lohmar.

About the Research

Joe Lyding and Karl Hess, both faculty members in the UIUC Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and in the Beckman Institute's molecular and electronic nanostructures main research area, publicly announced on February 14, 1996, a discovery that can have a significant impact on the lifespan of silicon chips.

Their discovery involves a simple change in processing the chips. Instead of treating them with hydrogen, as is traditionally done, Lyding and Hess used deuterium. Deuterium is a stable, non-radioactive isotope of hydrogen and weighs about twice as much as ordinary hydrogen. Where hydrogen molecules tend to get knocked off the silicon surface during an electrical charge, breaking hydrogen-silicon bonds and decreasing performance, in the tests performed by the Beckman Institute researchers, the deuterium stayed bonded.

Read more about the research involved in the Beckman News.