Glossary / Semiconductors
FinFET
A three-dimensional transistor in which the channel stands up like a fish's fin and the gate wraps around it on three sides.
As flat transistors shrink, the gate loses control of the channel and current leaks even when the device is off. Standing the channel up as a thin fin and surrounding it on three sides restores control. Digh Hisamoto and colleagues at Hitachi showed the prototype in the late 1980s, and a 2000 paper presented the FinFET as scalable to 20 nm[1].
Intel put it into volume production at 22 nm in 2011, and it remained the standard structure at the leading edge for over a decade. Its successor is the gate-all-around transistor, which surrounds the channel on all four sides.
Related terms
- Gate-all-aroundA transistor structure in which the channel is a stack of thin sheets (nanosheets), each fully surrounded by the gate on all sides.
- MOS transistorA transistor built from a metal electrode, an oxide layer and a semiconductor, in which a voltage on the electrode alone opens and closes the channel. Most of today's chips are made of these.
- Dennard scalingThe design rule that shrinking a transistor's dimensions and voltage by the same factor makes it faster and more efficient while keeping heat per unit area constant.