by Ed Korczynski, Senior Technical Editor, Solid State Technology
April 3, 2008 – Over 4000 researchers were in San Francisco last week for the annual Materials Research Society (MRS) spring meeting, to discuss advances in materials for electronics, energy, health, and transportation. Over 40 technical session run in parallel, with >10 sessions of interest to the semiconductor manufacturing industry at any given time. Theory and results for new IC memory cells, extensions of CMOS logic, and future quantum-dots and nano-rods were shown. Graphene still seems like a possible replacement for silicon in ICs.