Enhancing chip performance and reliability by CMOS+X technologies

Performance, reliability, and costs are the three core attributes of any integrated circuits (IC) and microelectronics system products. Continuous advances of microsystem chips have been made possible by relentless physical scaling-down in IC technologies, predominantly in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS). Rapid ending of Moore's Law calls for smart futuristic chips, toward which CMOS+X heterogeneous integration emerges as the main and viable pathway where X represents various innovative, nontraditional technologies and devices to be hetero-integrated into Si CMOS platform to deliver superior system performance with rich functional diversities and ultra robust reliability at affordable costs. This mini-review discusses a few emerging CMOS+X technology advances addressing the performance and reliability challenges for advanced IC chips, including vertical magnetic-cored inductive devices for single-chip radio frequency IC integration, in the backend-of-the-line metal wall isolation to suppress flying noises in complex CMOS ICs, and nano crossbar array and graphene-based on-chip electrostatic discharge protection structures as design-for-reliability solutions for advanced chips.