1. The Contribution of Dry Etching Technology to Progress in Semiconductor Integrated Circuits

Advances in the computer industry in recent years, as seen in the rapid commercialization of advanced information systems such as multimedia devices, is underpinned by various large-scale integration (LSI) devices such as microprocessors and memory. The LSI technology is advancing very rapidly, as shown in Fig. 1.1, with the device density doubling approximately every 2 years [1]. The transistor count in Fig. 1.1 refers to the number of transistors on each microprocessor chip, and this trend toward higher device density follows Moore’s law. Minimum feature sizes are shrunk approximately 30 % every 3 years, and logic devices and flash memory products, with 32-nm-level minimum feature sizes, were in volume production as of 2011. Some 28-nm production devices are also available as of this writing.