Integrated CMOS Tri-Gate Transistors

The semiconductor industry continues to push technological innovation to keep pace with Moore’s Law, shrinking transistors so that ever more can be packed on a chip. However, at future technology nodes, the ability to shrink transistors becomes more and more problematic, in part due to worsening short channel effects and an increase in parasitic leakages with scaling of the gate-length dimension. Both transistor off-state leakage (which increases with reducing gate length dimension) and gate oxide leakage (which increases with decreasing gate dielectric thickness) are contributing to the increase in power dissipation with scaling.

To address the transistor off-state leakage issue, in 2002 Intel developed the world’s first CMOS tri-gate transistor ... continue here: http://www.intel.com/technology/silicon/integrated_cmos.htm