Abstract

Since the advent of the integrated circuits in the late 1950’s, the number of devices contained on a single chip has approximately doubled every three years and this process has caused semiconductor devices to be made smaller and smaller. However, little is understood about the physical limitations that will determine whether or not these devices are practical. These questions have opened a new field for semiconductor research and technology in which a great opportunity is provided to study many new physical phenomena, some of which have been described in [1-4], and exploring a new generation of device structures and system architectures for the potential application of Ultra Large Scale Integrated (ULSI) system in the near future.

© 1991 Optical Society of America