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The expectations and requirements of research papers in electronics

Nature Electronics volume 6, page 718 (2023)Cite this article

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With micro- and nanoelectronic devices and circuits, the most important technical requirements are related to performance metrics (mobility and subthreshold swing for transistors, and switching energy and endurance for memristors), reproducibility (yield, variability, reliability and stability) and fabrication processes (the use of a competitive device structure and size, the use of industry-compatible materials and the feasibility of scaling to the wafer level)1,2. But expecting authors of a research manuscript to fulfil all the potential requirements is unfair. The reason being that no other article published in any journal has ever accomplished such a thing. Nevertheless, referees can, on occasion, have unrealistic expectations — and demands — for an individual research paper. Here I highlight key technical issues that are often raised during the peer-review process of such papers.

Industry, which relies on silicon complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology, typically avoids the use of materials with high diffusivity (silver, gold and iridium) because they could contaminate adjacent devices. However, this point needs to be considered in the right context because the materials allowed in each fabrication step of a microchip are different. In the front-end-of-line (FEOL), the restrictions are much more stringent because the contaminants could arrive at (and short) the transistors; in the back-end-of-line (BEOL), these restrictions could be much more relaxed because the distance to the transistors is higher and anti-diffusion barriers are often employed at the interface between the field oxide and the metallic interconnections. There are, for example, commercial memories that use iridium electrodes in the BEOL3, and gold liners are often used at the last metallization layer4. Companies also often employ gold electrodes in their prototypes5,6. Therefore, from a technical point of view, it all depends on where the device is integrated in the microchip.

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References

  1. International Roadmap for Devices and Systems More Moore (IEEE, 2020); https://irds.ieee.org/editions/2020

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  1. Materials Science and Engineering Program, Physical Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

    Mario Lanza

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  1. Mario Lanza
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Correspondence to Mario Lanza.

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Lanza, M. The expectations and requirements of research papers in electronics. Nat Electron 6, 718 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-023-01049-0

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