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Technology nodes from 10 µm to 2 nm

NODE SCALE

10 µm 2 nm

Selected: 250 nm
10 µm 3 µm 1,5 µm 1 µm 800 nm 600 nm 350 nm 250 nm 180 nm 130 nm 90 nm 65 nm 45 nm 32 nm 22 nm 16 nm 11 nm 7 nm 5 nm 3 nm 2 nm

Technology node · 250 nm

250 nm (0.25 µm)

The 250 nm process refers to the manufacturing technology that came into use at leading semiconductor manufacturers from 1997 onward. It is the first node covered by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, whose first edition was published in the same year.

At this node, the krypton-fluoride laser at 248 nm is no longer a special solution for individual layers, but the workhorse of production. For the first time, the feature size is significantly smaller than the exposure wavelength, and imaging can no longer be controlled simply by reducing dimensions. This marks the beginning of the era of resolution-enhancement techniques: the mask no longer carries the exact desired image, but a deliberately pre-distorted version that compensates in advance for known imaging errors. Additional assist features are also introduced; they are themselves too small to be printed, but modify the diffraction pattern of neighboring lines.

Trench isolation is standard at this node, as is chemical-mechanical polishing between all interconnect levels. Intel manufactured its 250 nm process on 200 mm wafers with five metallization layers. At the successor node, 180 nm, copper then replaces aluminum for interconnects.

Processors manufactured in 250 nm (selection):
  • Intel Pentium II (Deschutes, 1998)
  • Intel Pentium III (Katmai, 1999)
  • AMD K6-2 (1998)