Yearly Archives: 2015

Researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered a new phase of solid carbon, called Q-carbon, which is distinct from the known phases of graphite and diamond. They have also developed a technique for using Q-carbon to make diamond-related structures at room temperature and at ambient atmospheric pressure in air.

Phases are distinct forms of the same material. Graphite is one of the solid phases of carbon; diamond is another.

“We’ve now created a third solid phase of carbon,” says Jay Narayan, the John C. Fan Distinguished Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at NC State and lead author of three papers describing the work. “The only place it may be found in the natural world would be possibly in the core of some planets.”

Q-carbon has some unusual characteristics. For one thing, it is ferromagnetic — which other solid forms of carbon are not.

“We didn’t even think that was possible,” Narayan says.

In addition, Q-carbon is harder than diamond, and glows when exposed to even low levels of energy.

“Q-carbon’s strength and low work-function — its willingness to release electrons — make it very promising for developing new electronic display technologies,” Narayan says.

But Q-carbon can also be used to create a variety of single-crystal diamond objects. To understand that, you have to understand the process for creating Q-carbon.

Researchers start with a substrate, such as such as sapphire, glass or a plastic polymer. The substrate is then coated with amorphous carbon — elemental carbon that, unlike graphite or diamond, does not have a regular, well-defined crystalline structure. The carbon is then hit with a single laser pulse lasting approximately 200 nanoseconds. During this pulse, the temperature of the carbon is raised to 4,000 Kelvin (or around 3,727 degrees Celsius) and then rapidly cooled. This operation takes place at one atmosphere — the same pressure as the surrounding air.

The end result is a film of Q-carbon, and researchers can control the process to make films between 20 nanometers and 500 nanometers thick.

By using different substrates and changing the duration of the laser pulse, the researchers can also control how quickly the carbon cools. By changing the rate of cooling, they are able to create diamond structures within the Q-carbon.

“We can create diamond nanoneedles or microneedles, nanodots, or large-area diamond films, with applications for drug delivery, industrial processes and for creating high-temperature switches and power electronics,” Narayan says. “These diamond objects have a single-crystalline structure, making them stronger than polycrystalline materials. And it is all done at room temperature and at ambient atmosphere – we’re basically using a laser like the ones used for laser eye surgery. So, not only does this allow us to develop new applications, but the process itself is relatively inexpensive.”

And, if researchers want to convert more of the Q-carbon to diamond, they can simply repeat the laser-pulse/cooling process.

If Q-carbon is harder than diamond, why would someone want to make diamond nanodots instead of Q-carbon ones? Because we still have a lot to learn about this new material.

“We can make Q-carbon films, and we’re learning its properties, but we are still in the early stages of understanding how to manipulate it,” Narayan says. “We know a lot about diamond, so we can make diamond nanodots. We don’t yet know how to make Q-carbon nanodots or microneedles. That’s something we’re working on.”

NC State has filed two provisional patents on the Q-carbon and diamond creation techniques.

GaN Systems, a manufacturer of gallium nitride power transistors, announces that its foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), has expanded the high volume production of products based on GaN System’s proprietary Island Technology by 10X in response to surging global demand from consumer and enterprise customers. GaN Systems has the industry’s broadest and most comprehensive portfolio of GaN power transistors with both 100V and 650V GaN FETs shipping in volume.

Transistors based on GaN Systems’ Island Technology and using TSMC’s GaN fab process boast the best performance and Figure of Merit in the industry, easily outstripping the capabilities of the world’s highest performance silicon power semiconductors, the latest silicon carbide devices and competing gallium nitride products. The unique combination of TSMC’s gallium nitride process and GaN Systems’ proprietary Island Technology design is further enhanced by GaNPX packaging, which delivers high current handling, extremely low inductance and exceptional thermal performance. GaN Systems’ power switching transistors continue to lead the gallium nitride market, providing best-in-class 100V and 650V devices and driving product innovation ranging from thinner TVs to extended range electric vehicles.

Sajiv Dalal, VP Business Management at TSMC, comments, “We are delighted to confirm that our collaboration with GaN Systems has brought the promise of gallium nitride from concept through reliability testing and on to volume production.”

Adds Girvan Patterson, GaN Systems’ President, “GaN has emerged as the power semiconductor solution of choice. Smart mobile devices, slim TVs, games consoles, automotive systems and other mass volume items have been designed with GaN transistors as the enabling power technology, so it is imperative that devices are available in correspondingly large quantities. Using our patented Island Technology, we have designed and made available for widespread adoption GaN power solutions that greatly exceed the performance standards exhibited by silicon devices. That is why, after three years of working together, we are so excited to formally announce our collaboration with TSMC, the world’s leading third-party semiconductor manufacturing company and a byword for quality and service industry-wide.”

Delivering large volumes of highly reliable GaN transistors in near-chipscale packaging is the culmination of a journey GaN Systems began in 2008. The company was founded with the mission of creating a low cost, highly reliable GaN-on-Silicon product based on Island Technology, a method of creating small islands where electro-migration is mitigated, die size is minimized and very high current devices realized with high yield. Using Island Technology with TSMC’s GaN-on-Silicon manufacturing techniques enabled GaN Systems to deliver the most usable, high performance, normally-off transistor to the market in mid-2014. This has allowed global power system manufacturers in the energy storage, enterprise and consumer markets to design, develop, test and bring to market more powerful, lighter and far smaller new products in their quest to attain competitive edge. To meet customers’ increasing demand for high GaN volumes in 2016, TSMC’s commitment to volume production flow comes at the perfect time.

BY PHIL GARROU, Contributing Editor

One of the plenary presentations at this year’s IEEE 3DIC conference was “Advanced 2.5D/3D Hetero-Integration Technologies at GINTI, Tohoku University” by KW Lee, Koyanagi-san and co-workers, detailing the activities at the University and the prototyping spin-out.

The Global Integration Initiative (GINTI) is 8/12-inch R&D foundry fab for the R&D of 2.5D/3D integration technologies and applications. GINTI provides a process development infrastructure in a manufacturing-like fab environment and “low cost,” prototyping of proof of concepts using commercial/customized 2D chip/wafer, and a base-line process.

State-of-the technologies include design, layout and mask making to wafer thinning, forming of TSV on chip/ wafer (front side/backside TSV), redistribution routing, both side micro-bump formation, chip/wafer stacking, failure analysis, and reliability testing.

GINTI can provide 3D prototype LSI stacking using commercial 2D chips by die-level 3D hetero-integration, backside TSV formation and various stacking (C2C C2W, W2W, and self-assembly) technologies.

GINTI mainly focuses on a via-last backside TSV approach, because they feel it is a better solution for heterogeneously integrating different function, size, and material devices, with better flexibility for commercial chip/ wafers.

Figure 1

Figure 1

F2

Figure 2

Their process flow for via-last backside TSV fabrication is shown in FIGURE 1. The incoming LSI device wafer with metal bumps is temporarily bonded onto a support wafer. Then the Si substrate is thinned to target thickness from the backside by grinding and CMP. After via patterning on the ground surface, the deep Si trench is formed from the backside by RIE processing until the first level metallization layer (M1) is exposed. Oxide liner is deposited into via holes and the bottom oxide liner in via hole is selectively etched by dry etching to re-expose the M1 layer. Next, the deep trench is filled with Cu by electroplating after dep of barrier and seed metal layers. Re-distribution layer (RDL) is then formed on the backside and metal bumps are formed on the RDL by electroplating.

Finally, the support wafer is de-bonded from the thinned LSI wafer.

To create new 3D hetero-integrated systems they have developed die-level 3D integration technology. Commer- cially available 2D chips with different functions and sizes such as those of sensor, logic, and memories which were fabricated by different technologies, are processed to form TSVs and metal micro-bumps and integrated to form a 3D stacked chip in die level. FIGURE 2 shows a 3D stacked image sensor chip comprising three layers of CIS, CDS, and ADC chips for high speed image sensor system.

The National Science Foundation has awarded $1.2 million to three research groups at Indiana University to advance research on self-assembling molecules and computer-aided design software required to create the next generation of solar cells, circuits, sensors and other technology.

This interdisciplinary team in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Chemistry is led by Amar Flood, Steven Tait and Peter Ortoleva in collaboration with Mu-Hyun Baik of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, who previously served at IU.

Designing new materials at the molecular level is a key goal of the U.S. government’s Materials Genome Initiative, a project launched in 2011 to reduce the cost, and speed the creation, of these materials. As recipients of funds from the NSF’s Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future program, the IU scientists will contribute to this national initiative.

“There are more than 100 million known molecules, but in the vast majority of cases we cannot predict what sort of structure they will form when those molecules start packing together,” said Amar Flood, James F. Jackson Professor of Chemistry and Luther Dana Waterman Professor in the IU Bloomington Department of Chemistry, who is the principal investigator on the grant. “We want to be able to predict, as well as design, those structures.”

The results would represent a “transformative approach to the discovery of organic materials,” he said, combining computer-aided design, chemical synthesis and molecular characterization methods.

And recently, Flood and colleagues have shown such an ambitious goal is achievable.

In a paper published Nov. 23 in Chemistry–A European Journal, the IU scientists describe an innovative “one-pot” method to synthesize a new macromolecule called a tricarbazolo triazolophane, or “tricarb.”

A multifunctional, ring-shaped structure, tricarb molecules bear alignment markers so that they line up perfectly with each other upon contact to form highly organized, multilayered patterns. Tricarb molecules also have a central pocket to capture the negatively charged particles known as anions.

“Amar has developed a very elegant synthesis,” said Steven Tait, an associate professor of chemistry who is a co-author on the paper and also a co-investigator on the NSF grant. “The result is molecules that recognize each other in a very specific way to order and stack in beautiful, flower-shaped crystalline patterns with potentially transformative properties.”

The NSF-funded project will support creating molecular structures, like the tricarb molecule, that are specifically pre-programmed to self-assemble into three-dimensional structures that go beyond the comparatively simple, two-dimensional molecular arrangements.

“Creating building blocks that self-assemble into functional materials will be a major breakthrough in materials science and is a key component of the Materials Genome Initiative,” said Stephen C. Jacobson, chair of the IU Bloomington Department of Chemistry. “I am pleased that the NSF has recognized our faculty’s combined expertise in synthesis, characterization and theory in selecting them to contribute to this important initiative.”

Specifically, Flood said, the ability to alternate different molecules in highly ordered patterns is a key step in creating organic electronics, a new class of material whose applications include highly efficient solar panels and advanced computer circuitry.

“The best solar cells right now are made of extremely pure silicon, which requires a very precise — and expensive — production process,” Tait said. “But if we can create extremely pure, self-assembling organic materials, controlling the order of their interfaces and components at the molecular level, the performance of these organic materials will improve significantly, and their costs will go down.”

Most important for the creation of new molecular structures, the IU team will use the grant to develop computer-aided design software enabling virtual experimentation with the potential to examine the millions of molecular compounds of interest to material scientists.

Currently, Flood explained, scientists must engage in an arduous and time-consuming process of trial-and-error to design new structures with highly specialized properties since no blueprint exists for how molecules will react upon coming into contact with each other. But with virtual experimentation, molecular engineers could screen 100 potential molecular combinations over 100 days, only then devoting time and resources to synthesize the top five candidates, which can itself require about 100 days per compound, creating enormous time-savings.

“CAD software is prevalent in electrical, mechanical and civil engineering, and we need that same technology at our fingertips for molecular and materials engineering,” Flood said. “The innovations coming from our computational collaborators are key.”

These collaborations are with Ortoleva, a Distinguished Professor in the IU Bloomington Department of Chemistry who will help develop the CAD software using recent advances in multi-scale simulation that employ Baik’s work on atomic-level force fields.

“Ultimately, we plan to show experimentally how molecules can be programmed so that they assemble themselves into 2-D and 3-D arrangements, as well as produce a working, operational and accurate simulation software,” Flood added. “Our goal will be to achieve high fidelity between theory, design and experimentation.”

BY PETE SINGER, Editor-in-Chief

The semiconductor industry is sure to benefit by the “digitization” of manufacturing in that it’s an important component of the IoT explosion, along with smart homes, smart cities, smart health, etc. But is the semiconductor manufacturing industry – already one of the most advanced in the world – ready for the Industry 4.0 revolution? Will the cobbler’s children get new shoes?

I believe it will, but there are some major roadblocks that need to be overcome.

New innovation is required for a couple of reasons. First, the path to continued cost reduction through scaling has come to an end. The industry will continue to push to smaller dimensions and pack more functionality on a single chip because the world will always need super- advanced electronics for data servers, cloud computing and networking. But it’s looking to be an increasingly expensive proposition.

At the same time, the industry is looking to the Internet of Things explosion as the “next big thing.” The two most important aspects of IoT devices will be low power and low cost. Speaking at a press conference at Semicon Europa in October, Rutger Wijburg, Senior VP and General Manager Fab Manufacturing for GlobalFoundries said a typical figure of merit in the mobile space is $0.25/mm2. “My estimation is that the massive volume going into the Internet of Things has to be delivered for ASPs (average selling price) between $0.05 and $0.10/mm2,” he said.

Could the Industry 4.0 movement enable a dramatic reduction in costs? Proponents say greater connectivity and information sharing — enabled by new capabilities in data analytics, remote monitoring and mobility — will lead to increased efficiency and reduced costs. There will also be greater efficiency across the supply chain.

Sadly, there’s a long way to go for the semiconductor industry to realize the kind of data sharing and “digitization” embodied in the Industry 4.0 concept. The main challenge is that the semiconductor industry has been so secretive, especially when it comes to process recipes and yield data, that 4.0-type of data sharing is almost impossible. What’s needed? A whole new strategy for looking at IP and deciding what is critical and what can be shared.

This year, the Justus Liebig University Giessen awards its Röntgen Prize to Dr. Eleftherios Goulielmakis. The Röntgen Prize is awarded each year in an academic award ceremony for outstanding work on basic research into radiation physics and radiation biology. It is named in memory of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, who was a professor in Giessen from 1879 until 1888. The main goal is to distinguish work by young scientists. Half of the € 15,000 prize is donated by Pfeiffer Vacuum and the Dr. Erich Pfeiffer Foundation, and the other half by the Ludwig Schunk Foundation.

This year’s award winner, Dr. Goulielmakis, is currently the head of the research group at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching near Munich. He is receiving the award for outstanding contributions in the field of attosecond physics and technology with soft X-rays.

In 2005, Dr. Goulielmakis received his doctorate in physics from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, with studies in attosecond physics. These studies formed the basis for his pioneering contributions in this field. After his doctoral thesis, he succeeded in measuring the shortest electromagnetic pulse so far of 8 x 10-17 s. This ultrashort light pulse allows the observation of electron dynamics in atoms and molecules in real time. For the first time,

Dr. Goulielmakis and his team managed to fully characterize the motion of valence electrons in ions in real time with an attosecond pulse (1 attosecond = 10-18 s) in the soft X-ray range. After that, Dr. Goulielmakis and his group developed a “light field synthesizer,” which can manipulate the waveform of a light pulse with attosecond precision. This opens up new methods for controlling electrons with light in the soft X-ray and extreme ultraviolet range with high temporal resolution. Furthermore, Dr. Goulielmakis and his team succeeded in accelerating electrons in solids with ultrafast laser fields, which for the first time allows a coherent emission of photons to be achieved in an extreme ultraviolet spectrum.

On the basis of these research results, ultrashort X-ray pulses can be generated using laser in a special vacuum tube. These pulses make it possible to observe extremely small structures and even, for example, allow electrons to be depicted.

Another application could be light-based circuits, which could increase the computational
speed by a factor of 100,000 compared to current technology. The work of Dr. Goulielmakis contributes to the necessary fundamental understanding for enabling such light-based circuits to be developed in the first place.

Manfred Bender, CEO of Pfeiffer Vacuum Technology AG, congratulated the award winner: “Many research facilities have been a partner to Pfeiffer Vacuum for many years now. Our
vacuum solutions are successfully used at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching and we are therefore particularly pleased that Dr. Eleftherios Goulielmakis is this year’s Röntgen Prize winner.” Bender explained further: “For 125 years now, Pfeiffer Vacuum has been setting standards in vacuum technology. The company looks back on a success story shaped by a pioneering spirit and passion, which contributed to the technological
progress of industry and science from the very beginning. Therefore, it is very important to us to promote cutting-edge research and, in particular, the next generation.”

Wilfried Glaum, Chairman of Dr. Erich Pfeiffer-Stiftung, the Röntgen Prize winner Dr. Eleftherios Goulielmakis and Manfred Bender, CEO of Pfeiffer Vacuum Technology AG (from left)

Wilfried Glaum, Chairman of Dr. Erich Pfeiffer-Stiftung, the Röntgen Prize winner Dr. Eleftherios Goulielmakis and Manfred Bender, CEO of Pfeiffer Vacuum Technology AG (from left)

A solar cell is basically a semiconductor, which converts sunlight into electricity, sandwiched between metal contacts that carry the electrical current.

But this widely used design has a flaw: The shiny metal on top of the cell actually reflects sunlight away from the semiconductor where electricity is produced, reducing the cell’s efficiency.

Now, Stanford University scientists have discovered how to hide the reflective upper contact and funnel light directly to the semiconductor below. Their findings, published in the journal ACS Nano, could lead to a new paradigm in the design and fabrication of solar cells.

“Using nanotechnology, we have developed a novel way to make the upper metal contact nearly invisible to incoming light,” said study lead author Vijay Narasimhan, who conducted the work as a graduate student at Stanford. “Our new technique could significantly improve the efficiency and thereby lower the cost of solar cells.”

Silicon pillars emerge from nanosize holes in a thin gold film. The pillars funnel 97 percent of incoming light to a silicon substrate, a technology that could significantly boost the performance of conventional solar cells. Credit: Vijay Narasimhan, Stanford University

A YouTube video of the experiment can be seen at: https://youtu.be/mJORhZaGH5A

Mirror-like metal

In most solar cells, the upper contact consists of a metal wire grid that carries electricity to or from the device. But these wires also prevent sunlight from reaching the semiconductor, which is usually made of silicon.

“The more metal you have on the surface, the more light you block,” said study co-author Yi Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering. “That light is then lost and cannot be converted to electricity.”

Metal contacts, therefore, “face a seemingly irreconcilable tradeoff between electrical conductivity and optical transparency,” Narasimhan added. “But the nanostructure we created eliminates that tradeoff.”

For the study, the Stanford team placed a 16nm thick film of gold on a flat sheet of silicon. The gold film was riddled with an array of nanosized square holes, but to the eye, the surface looked like a shiny, gold mirror.

Optical analysis revealed that the perforated gold film covered 65 percent of the silicon surface and reflected, on average, 50 percent of the incoming light. The scientists reasoned that if they could somehow hide the reflective gold film, more light would reach the silicon semiconductor below.

Silicon nanopillars

The solution: Create nanosized pillars of silicon that “tower” above the gold film and redirect the sunlight before it hits the metallic surface.

Creating silicon nanopillars turned out to be a one-step chemical process.

“We immersed the silicon and the perforated gold film together in a solution of hydrofluoric acid and hydrogen peroxide,” said graduate student and study co-author Thomas Hymel. “The gold film immediately began sinking into the silicon substrate, and silicon nanopillars began popping up through the holes in the film.”

Within seconds, the silicon pillars grew to a height of 330 nanometers, transforming the shiny gold surface to a dark red. This dramatic color change was a clear indication that the metal was no longer reflecting light.

“As soon as the silicon nanopillars began to emerge, they started funneling light around the metal grid and into the silicon substrate underneath,” Narasimhan explained.

He compared the nanopillar array to a colander in your kitchen sink. “When you turn on the faucet, not all of the water makes it through the holes in the colander, ” he said. “But if you were to put a tiny funnel on top of each hole, most of the water would flow straight through with no problem. That’s essentially what our structure does: The nanopillars act as funnels that capture light and guide it into the silicon substrate through the holes in the metal grid.”

Big boost

The research team then optimized the design through a series of simulations and experiments.

“Solar cells are typically shaded by metal wires that cover 5-to-10 percent of the top surface,” Narasimhan said. “In our best design, nearly two-thirds of the surface can be covered with metal, yet the reflection loss is only 3 percent. Having that much metal could increase conductivity and make the cell far more efficient at converting light to electricity.”

For example, this technology could boost the efficiency of a conventional solar cell from 20 percent to 22 percent, a significant increase, he said.

The research team plans to test the design on a working solar cell and assess its performance in real-world conditions.

Covert contacts

Besides gold, the nanopillar architecture will also work with contacts made of silver, platinum, nickel and other metals, said graduate student and co-author Ruby Lai.

“We call them covert contacts, because the metal hides in the shadows of the silicon nanopillars,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what type of metal you put in there. It will be nearly invisible to incoming light.”

In addition to silicon, this new technology can be used with other semiconducting materials for a variety of applications, including photosensors, light-emitting diodes and displays, transparent batteries, as well as solar cells.

“With most optoelectronic devices, you typically build the semiconductor and the metal contacts separately,” said Cui, co-director of the Department of Energy’s Bay Area Photovoltaic Consortium (BAPVC). “Our results suggest a new paradigm where these components are designed and fabricated together to create a high-performance interface.”

In the production of power, nearly two-thirds of energy input from fossil fuels is lost as waste heat. Industry is hungry for materials that can convert this heat to useful electricity, but a good thermoelectric material is hard to find.

Increasing the efficiency of thermoelectric materials is essential if they are to be used commercially. Northwestern University researchers now report that doping tin selenide with sodium boosts its performance as a thermoelectric material, pushing it toward usefulness. The doped material produces a significantly greater amount of electricity than the undoped material, given the same amount of heat input.

Details of the sodium-doped tin selenide — the most efficient thermoelectric material to date at producing electricity from waste heat — will be published Nov. 26 by the journal Science.

The Northwestern development could lead to new thermoelectric devices with potential applications in the automobile industry, glass- and brick-making factories, refineries, coal- and gas-fired power plants, and places where large combustion engines operate continuously (such as in large ships and tankers).

Most semiconducting materials, such as silicon, have only one conduction band to work with for doping, but tin selenide is unusual and has multiple bands; the researchers took advantage of these bands. They showed they could use sodium to access these channels and send electrons quickly through the material, driving up the heat conversion efficiency.

“The secret to our material is that multiband doping produces enhanced electrical properties,” said Mercouri G. Kanatzidis, an inorganic chemist who led the multidisciplinary team. “By doping multiple bands, we are able to multiply the positive effect. To increase the efficiency, we need the electrons to be as mobile as possible. Tin selenide provides us with a superhighway — it has at least four fast-moving lanes for hole carriers instead of one congested lane.”

Kanatzidis, a Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, is a world leader in thermoelectric materials research. He is a corresponding author of the paper.

To produce a voltage, a good thermoelectric material needs to maintain a hot side — where the waste heat is, for example — while the other side remains cool. (A voltage can be harvested as power.) Less than two years ago, Kanatzidis and his team, with postdoctoral fellow Lidong Zhao as protagonist, identified tin selenide as a surprisingly good thermoelectric material; it is a poor conductor of heat (much like wood) — a desirable property for a thermoelectric — while maintaining good electrical conductivity.

Kanatzidis’ colleague Christopher M. Wolverton, a computational theorist, calculated the electronic structure of tin selenide. He found the electrical properties could be improved by adding a doping material.

“Tin selenide is very unusual, not only because of its exceedingly low thermal conductivity, but also because it has many conduction lanes,” said Wolverton, a senior author of the paper and professor of materials science and engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. “Our calculations said if the material could be doped, its thermal power and electrical conductivity would increase. But we didn’t know what to use as a dopant.”

Sodium was the first dopant the researchers tried, and it produced the results they were looking for. “Chris’ computations opened our eyes to doping,” Kanatzidis said. He and Zhao successfully grew crystals of the new doped material.

The researchers also were pleased to see that adding sodium did not affect the already very low thermal conductivity of the material. It stayed low, so the heat stays on one side of the thermoelectric material. Electrons like to be in a low-energy state, so they move from the hot (high-energy) side to the cool side. The hot side becomes positive, and the cool side becomes negative, creating a voltage.

“Previously, there was no obvious path for finding improved thermoelectrics,” Wolverton said. “Now we have discovered a few useful knobs to turn as we develop new materials.”

The efficiency of waste heat conversion in thermoelectrics is reflected by its “figure of merit,” called ZT. In April 2014, the researchers reported that tin selenide exhibits a ZT of 2.6 at around 650 degrees Celsius. That was the highest ZT to date — a world record. But the undoped material produced that record-high ZT only at that temperature. (There is a ZT for every temperature.)

The new doped material produces high ZTs across a broad temperature range, from room temperature to 500 degrees Celsius. Thus, the average ZT of the doped material is much higher, resulting in higher conversion efficiency.

“Now we have record-high ZTs across a broad range of temperatures,” Kanatzidis said. “The larger the temperature difference in a thermoelectric device, the greater the efficiency.”

Cambridge Nanotherm, a producer of thermal management technology, has won the “LED Lighting Product of the Year” award at the 2015 Elektra Awards for its “Nanotherm DM” product. The industry’s largest technology and business awards, the Elektras is in its 13th year of celebrating the best the electronics industry has achieved.

Cambridge Nanotherm beat stiff competition from NASDAQ listed ON Semiconductor, Khatod Optoelectronics and Zeta Specialist Lighting to win the LED Lighting Product of the Year category. Commenting on the award the judges noted that Nanotherm DM is uniquely compatible with standard manufacturing processes and picked up on the fact that the company manufactures Nanotherm DM at its facility near Cambridge and exports to customers in the US and Asia.

Nanotherm DM is a robust and cost effective alternative to aluminium nitride, an electronics grade ceramic that is used in thermally challenging electronics. The production of Nanotherm DM involves a patented ‘ECO’ process (Electro Chemical Oxidation) that converts the surface of aluminium into a nanoceramic dielectric layer. The nanoceramic aluminium is completed with a copper circuit sputtered onto the nanoceramic to customer specifications. This results in a material with thermal properties that rival aluminium nitride but with the mechanical properties of aluminium that offers the best thermal performance to price ratio available.

Initially targeted at Chip-on-Board modules and LED packaging markets, Nanotherm DM enables LED manufacturers to make significant cost savings without impacting the performance of their products.

Collecting the award on Tuesday night Mike Edwards, Sales Director, said: “Winning an Elektra award is testament to the hard work and dedication our team has put into the development and commercialisation of Nanotherm DM. It cements Nanotherm’s place at the vanguard of UK high-technology manufacturing and I’m delighted to be taking the award back to our manufacturing facility in Haverhill. 2016 is shaping up to be a very exciting year for Nanotherm as we continue to ramp up our production capabilities to meet unprecedented demand for our thermal management solutions.”

The win follows on from Nanotherm being shortlisted for the R&D 100 awards and winning the 2015 Insider Media Made in the East technology award.

The winners of the 2015 were announced on the Tuesday 24th November at the awards ceremony taking place at The Lancaster, London.

Mentor Graphics Corp. announced it is collaborating with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to qualify the Mentor RTL to GDS platform, including the RealTime Designer physical RTL synthesis solution and Olympus-SoC place & route system, for the current version of the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 22FDX platform reference flow. In addition, Mentor and GLOBALFOUNDRIES are working on the development of the Process Design Kit (PDK) for the 22FDX platform. The PDK includes support for the Mentor Calibre platform, covering design rule checking (DRC), layout vs. schematic (LVS) and metal fill solutions for 22FDX. These solutions help mutual customers optimize their designs using the capability of 22FDX technology to manage the power, performance and leakage.

“We are collaborating closely with Mentor Graphics on enabling their products to help customers realize the benefits of the 22FDX platform,” said Pankaj Mayor, vice president of Business Development for GLOBALFOUNDRIES. “The qualification of Mentor tools for implementation flows and design verification will help designers to achieve an optimal balance between power, performance and cost.”

In design flows for advanced technologies, RealTime Designer addresses the need for higher capacity, faster runtimes, improved quality of results (QoR) and integrated floorplanning capabilities. For 22FDX in particular, it offers support for multi-VDD designs based on the Unified Power Format (UPF), multi-Vt optimization, leakage and dynamic power analysis and optimization, and a unique RTL-level floorplanning technology for improved QoR and runtimes. The Olympus-SoC tool comprehensively addresses the performance, capacity, time-to-market, power, and variability challenges encountered at advanced technologies. Support for 22FDX includes low power capabilities such as multi-VDD flow, concurrent multi-corner multi-mode timing and power optimization, forward and reverse bias handling, and DCAP cell insertion on power meshes for noise reduction.

“Our customers are designing some of the most complex chips for mobile, wireless, networking and graphics products,” said Pravin Madhani, general manager of the IC Implementation Group at Mentor Graphics. “Our collaboration with GLOBALFOUNDRIES will enable us to deliver advanced digital implementation flows for the 22FDX platform for our mutual customers.”

The Calibre nmDRC, Calibre nmLVS, and Calibre YieldEnhancer tools provide the verification functionality available in the 22FDX PDK. Core DRC and LVS verification are provided by the Calibre nmDRC and Calibre nmLVS tools, respectively. Calibre YieldEnhancer with SmartFill helps designers meet planarity and density requirements, and minimize post-fill timing changes, by intelligently and automatically filling designs with the optimum distribution and placement of fill shapes.

The next release of the 22FDX PDK will place GLOBALFOUNDRIES differentiated DFM capabilities into the hands of designers. The industry-leading DRC+, Manufacturing Analysis and Scoring (MAS), and Yield Enhancement Services (YES) design kit offerings from GLOBALFOUNDRIES, all based upon the Calibre platform, assist design teams in analyzing the manufacturability impact of their design styles with the 22FDX process technology. The DRC+ methodology uses fast pattern-matching capabilities in the Calibre Pattern Matching tool to identify lithographically problematic patterns, then uses Calibre nmDRC to enforce tighter design constraints where those patterns occur. The MAS and YES methodologies help reduce manufacturing variability: MAS employs the DFM Scoring functionality in Calibre YieldAnalyzer to score IP blocks and SoCs across all layers; in the YES service, GLOBALFOUNDRIES engineers use the layout modification capabilities in Calibre YieldEnhancer to modify edges and via placements to improve the robustness of the layout.

“By incorporating the most advanced Calibre analysis and verification capabilities into its 22FDX platform, GLOBALFOUNDRIES is giving designers the tools they need to build robustness into their products,” said Joseph Sawicki, vice president, Design to Silicon Division at Mentor Graphics. “This not only ensures high-quality designs are delivered for fabrication, but also will help ensure faster ramps to production.”

Mentor Graphics and GLOBALFOUNDRIES are working on supporting advanced extraction and reliability verification sign-off capabilities for Calibre xACT and Calibre PERC solutions.