R AND D PROGRAM TO DESIGN AND FABRICATE DIGITAL MONOLITHIC MICROCIRCUITS HAVIN AVERAGE PROPAGATION DELAY TIME OF 1 NS

The primary objective of this research and development program is the fabrication of silicon monolithic microcircuits with average propagation delay times in the subnanosecond region. A secondary objective of the program during the remaining quarterly period is to make preliminary investigation of the technological problems that relate to the fabrication of ultra-high-speed complex bipolar arrays. This investigation is directed toward predicting the improvements in speed that will be obtained in digital systems through the fabrication of many very-high-speed monolithic circuits within a single chip. During this reporting period, primary program effort was applied in four main areas refinement of the techniques required for the design and fabrication of high-speed npn silicon transistors and of digital micro-circuits of the saturating and unsaturating type with better speed-power properties fabrication and evaluation of the SMX3, a high-speed microcircuit version of an npn ECL circuit used by Lincoln Laboratory and evaluation of the circuit design and fabrication techniques required for the construction of a complex bipolar microcircuit array for 3-, 9-, and 27-bit versions of a parity generator.