Category Archives: MEMS

At this week’s IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2014), nanoelectronics research center imec and its associated lab at Ghent University have demonstrated the industry’s first integrated graphene optical electro-absorption modulator (EAM) capable of 10Gb/s modulation speed. Combining low insertion loss, low drive voltage, high thermal stability, broadband operation and compact footprint, the device marks an important milestone in the realization of next-generation, high-density low-power integrated optical interconnects.

Integrated optical modulators with high modulation speed, small footprint and broadband athermal operation are highly desired for future chip-level optical interconnects. Graphene is a promising material to achieve this, owing to its fast tunable absorption over a wide spectral range. Imec’s graphene-silicon EAM consists of a 50mm long graphene-oxide-silicon capacitor structure implemented on top of a planarized silicon-on-insulator (SOI) rib waveguide. For the first time, high-quality optical modulation was demonstrated in a hybrid graphene-silicon modulator, at bit rates up to 10Gb/s. A competitive optical insertion loss below 4dB and extinction ratio of 2.5dB were obtained over a broad wavelength range of 80nm around 1550nm center wavelength. Moreover, no significant changes in performance were observed for temperatures in the range of 20-49°C, implying a robust athermal operation. As such, imec’s graphene-silicon EAM outperforms state-of-the-art SiGe EAMs on thermal robustness and optical bandwidth specifications.

“With this breakthrough result, imec has illustrated the huge potential of graphene optical EA modulators with respect to thermal, bandwidth, and footprint benefits,” said Philippe Absil, 3D and Optical Technologies department director at imec.  “This achievement underscores our dedicated work and industry leadership in R&D on high bandwidth chip-level optical input/output. Future work will focus on further improving the modulation speed of our graphene EAM, similar to the speed obtained in highly optimized Si(Ge) modulators (30-50 Gb/s).”

Imec’s research on high-bandwidth optical input/output (I/O) explores optical solutions for realizing high-bandwidth chip-level I/O. With support by its associated lab at Ghent University it aims at developing a scalable, manufacturable silicon-based optical interconnect technology for the telecom and datacom industry.  Imec’s portfolio includes low-loss strip waveguides, highly efficient grating couplers, 25Gb/s Mach-Zehnder modulators, 25Gb/s Ge photodetectors and more. Imec’s R&D on high bandwidth chip-level input/output is performed in cooperation with imec’s key partners in its core CMOS programs including Intel, Samsung, TSMC, Globalfoundries, Micron, Sony, SK Hynix, Huawei.

Imec recently joined the Graphene Flagship, Europe’s 1 billion EUR Programme covering the whole value chain from materials production to components and system. This will further strengthen imec’s strategic position in exploiting Graphene’s unique properties for optical interconnect applications.

New work from Carnegie’s Ivan Naumov and Russell Hemley delves into the chemistry underlying some surprising recent observations about hydrogen, and reveals remarkable parallels between hydrogen and graphene under extreme pressures. Their work is the cover story in the December issue of Accounts of Chemical Research.

This image is a comparison of the carbon compound graphene with a similar hydrogen-based structure synthesized by Carnegie scientists. Credit: Carneige's Ivan Naumov and Russell Hemley

This image is a comparison of the carbon compound graphene with a similar hydrogen-based structure synthesized by Carnegie scientists.
Credit: Carneige’s Ivan Naumov and Russell Hemley

Hydrogen is the most-abundant element in the cosmos. With only a single electron per atom, it is deceptively simple. As a result, hydrogen has been a testing ground for theories of the chemical bond since the birth of quantum mechanics a century ago. Understanding the nature of chemical bonding in extreme environments is crucial for expanding our understanding of matter over the broad range of conditions found in the universe.

Observing hydrogen’s behavior under very high pressures has been a great challenge for researchers. But recently teams have been able to observe that at pressures of 2-to-3.5 million times normal atmospheric pressure it transforms into an unexpected structure consisting of layered sheets, rather than a close-packed metal as had been predicted many years ago.

These hydrogen sheets resemble the carbon compound graphene. Graphene’s layers are each constructed of a honeycomb structure made of six-atom carbon rings. This conventional carbon graphene, first synthesized about a decade ago, is very light, but incredibly strong, and conducts heat and electricity very efficiently. These properties promise revolutionary technology, including advanced optical electronics for screens, high-functioning photovoltaic cells, and enhanced batteries and other energy storage devices.

The new work from Naumov and Hemley shows that the stability of the unusual hydrogen structure arises from the intrinsic stability of its hydrogen rings. These rings form because of so-called aromaticity, which is well understood in carbon-containing molecules such as benzene, as well as in graphene. Aromatic structures take on a ring-like shape that can be thought of as alternating single and double bonded carbons. But what actually happens is that the electrons that make up these theoretically alternating bonds become delocalized and float in a shared circle around the inside of the ring, increasing stability.

Naumov and Hemley’s study also indicates that hydrogen initially becomes a dark poorly conducting metal like graphite instead of a conventional shiny metal and a good conductor, as was originally suggested in theoretical calculations going back to the 1930’s using early quantum mechanical models for solids.

Though the discovery of this layered sheet character of dense hydrogen has come as a surprise to many, chemists 30 years ago–before the discovery of graphene–predicted the structure based on simple chemical considerations. Their work is validated and extended by the new findings.

“Overall, our results indicate that chemical bonding occurs over a much broader range of conditions than people had previously considered. However, the structural effects of that chemical bonding under extreme conditions can be very different than that observed under the ordinary conditions that are familiar to us,” Hemley said.

Researchers in Spain have discovered that if lead atoms are intercalated on a graphene sheet, a powerful magnetic field is generated by the interaction of the electrons’ spin with their orbital movement. This property could have implications in spintronics, an emerging technology promoted by the European Union to create advanced computational systems.

Graphene is considered the material of the future due to its extraordinary optical and electronic mechanical properties, especially because it conducts electrons very quickly. However, it does not have magnetic properties, and thus no method has been found to manipulate these electrons or any of their properties to use it in new magnetoelectronic devices, although Spanish scientists have come upon a key.

Researchers from IMDEA Nanoscience, the Autonomous University of Madrid, the Madrid Institute of Materials Science (CSIC) and the University of the Basque Country describe in the journal Nature Physics this week how to create a powerful magnetic field using this new material.

The secret is to intercalate atoms or Pb islands below the sea of hexagons of carbon that make up graphene. This produces an enormous interaction between two electron characteristics: their spin – a small ‘magnet’ linked to their rotation – and their orbit, the movement they follow around the nucleus.

“This spin-orbit interaction is a million times more intense than that inherent to graphene, which is why we obtain revolutions that could have important uses, for example in data storage,” explains Rodolfo Miranda, Director of IMDEA Nanoscience and head of the study.

To obtain this effect, the scientists laid a layer of lead on another of graphene, in turn grown over an iridium crystal. In this configuration the lead forms “islands” below the graphene and the electrons of this two-dimensional material behave as if in the presence of a colossal 80-tesla magnetic field, which facilitates the selective control of the flow of spins.

Traffic control with two lanes

“And, what is most important, under these conditions certain electronic states are topologically protected; in other words, they are immune to defects, impurities or geometric disturbances,” continues Miranda, who gives this example: “If we compare it to traffic, in a traditional spintronic material cars circulate along a single-lane road, which make collisions more likely, whilst with this new material we have traffic control with two spatially separate lanes, preventing crashes.”

Spintronics is a new technology that uses electrons’ magnetic spin to store information bits. It arose with the discovery of giant magnetoresistance, a finding which won Peter Grümberg and Albert Fert the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2007. It is an effect that causes great changes to the electric resistance of fine multi-layer materials and has led to the development of components as varied as the reader heads on hard disks or the sensors in airbags.

The first generation of spintronic or magnetoresistant devices was based on the effect magnetic materials have on electron spin. But a second generation is already up and running, and encompasses this new study, in which electrons’ own spin-orbit interaction acts on them as if there were a real external magnetic field, even if there is not.

The use of graphene as an active component in spintronics is one of the fundamental aims of the large European Union project “Graphene Flagship.” The scientists’ final objective is to wilfully control the type of spin the electrons in this new material have in order to apply it to the electronic devices of the future.

Synopsys, Inc. today announced the expansion of its collaboration with imec (nanoelectronics research center imec) to nanowire and other devices (FinFETs, Tunnel-FETs) targeting the 5-nanometer (nm) technology node and beyond. The agreement enables Synopsys to deliver accurate, process-calibrated models for its Sentaurus TCAD (technology computer aided design) tools to semiconductor manufacturers for use during 5nm technology node research and development. This latest agreement between imec and Synopsys follows successfully completed collaborations on FinFET and 3D-IC technologies for the 10nm and 7nm technology nodes.

“At imec, we focus on bringing the semiconductor industry leaders together to deliver future technologies,” said An Steegen, senior vice president of process technologies at imec. “We are excited to expand our cooperation with Synopsys, the primary TCAD provider, to explore next-generation device and process technologies for 5 nanometer. This continued tight collaboration with Synopsys will enable us to tackle the physics and engineering of advanced devices and introduce a new device design infrastructure for the industry.”

Working closely together, the joint Synopsys-imec team is investigating, among other topics, a vertical nanowire-nanosheet hybrid SRAM cell to target 5nm technology. Early studies show the benefits of nanowire-nanosheet technology in density and performance compared to conventional FinFETs and lateral nanowires. Synopsys’ Sentaurus TCAD tools that support this collaboration are used by technology development teams at foundries and integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) for device architecture selection, design and process optimization. Using early versions of Synopsys’ TCAD models allows the imec project team to explore a range of topics including fundamental device physics (material science, quantum transport and strain engineering), middle-of-line (MOL) local interconnects and the optimization of parasitics. A significant part of the analysis involves full-3D process and electrical simulations to identify device and interconnect reliability solutions for these highly scaled circuits.

“This is the first time a process-calibrated TCAD simulation flow has been used to comprehensively study the process, device and circuit architectures so early in the technology path-finding process,” said Anda Mocuta, logic device manager at imec.

The Synopsys TCAD tools used in this collaboration include the industry-standard simulators Sentaurus Process, Sentaurus Device, Sentaurus Interconnect and Raphael. 3D process structures are read into Raphael for extracting the resistance and capacitance of MOL structures and are combined with Sentaurus-derived compact models for circuit simulation with Synopsys’ HSPICE tool. This simulation flow enables technologists to evaluate the speed and power consumption of ring oscillators and other test circuits in the early stage of technology development, thereby closely linking technology development and selection with circuit-level targets.

“This expanded collaboration with imec builds on the success of previous collaborations to address key challenges at the 5 nanometer technology node,” said Howard Ko, senior vice president and general manager of the Silicon Engineering Group at Synopsys. “Imec’s advanced technology prototyping and characterization capabilities make it an ideal partner for our development and calibration of advanced Sentaurus TCAD models to address the significant technical and business challenges that our customers face in the development of 5nm node technologies.”

What’s next for MEMS?


December 16, 2014

By Paula Doe, SEMI

The proliferation of sensors into high volume consumer markets, and into the emerging Internet of Things, is driving the MEMS market to maturity, with a developed ecosystem to ease use and grow applications. But it is also bringing plenty of demands for new technologies, and changes in how companies will compete.

While the IoT may be all about sensors, it is not necessarily a bonanza for most traditional MEMS sensor makers. “The surprising winner turns to be optical MEMS for optical cross connect for the data center, where big growth is coming,” said Jérémie Bouchaud, IHS Director and Sr. Principal Analyst, MEMS & Sensors, at the recent MEMS Industry Group (MIG) “MEMS Executive Congress” held in Scottsdale, Arizona from November 5-7.

The market for wearables will also see fast growth for the next five years, largely for smart watches, driving demand for motion sensors, health sensors, sensor hubs and software –but even in 2019 the market for sensors in wearables will remain <5% the size of the phone/tablet market, IHS predicts.  The greater IoT market may reach billions of other connected devices in the next decade, but sensor demand will be very fragmented and very commoditized. Smart homes may use 20 million sensors in 2018, but many other industrial applications will probably each use only 100,000 to 2-3 million sensors a year, Bouchaud noted.

And most of this sensor market will be non-MEMS sensors, some mature and some emerging, including light sensors, fingerprint sensors, pulse sensors, gas sensors, and thermal sensors, all requiring different and varied manufacturing technologies.  Much of the new sensor demand from automotive will be also be for non-MEMS radar and cameras, though they will also add MEMS for higher performance gyros, lidar and microbolometers, according to IHS. Expect major MEMS makers to diversify into more of these other types of sensors.

MEMS Exec Bouchaud - IHS - MIG US 2014_Page_22_Resized

Yole Développement CEO Jean Christophe Eloy looked at how the value in the IoT would develop.  While the emerging IoT market is initially primarily a hardware market, with hardware sales climbing healthily for the next five years or so, it will quickly become primarily a software and services market.  In five to six years hardware sales will level off, and the majority of the value will shift to data processing and value added services.  This information service market will continue to soar, to account for 75% of the $400 Billion IoT market by 2024.

MEMS Exec JC Eloy_Market Panel_MIG 2014 V1_Page_28_Resized

Re-thinking the business models?

The IoT will bring big changes to the electronics industry, from new technologies to new business models, and new leaders, suggested George Liu, TSMC Director of Corporate Development.  He of course also argued that the high volume and low costs required for connected objects would drive sensor production to high volume foundries, and drive more integration with CMOS for smart distributed processing at CMOS makers.

Liu projected these changes would mean a new set of companies would come out on top. Few leading system makers managed to successfully transition from the PC era to the mobile handset era, or from the mobile handset era to the smart phone era, as both the key technologies and the winning business models changed, and chip makers faced disruption as well. “For one thing, the business model changed from making everything in house to making nothing,” he noted. “The challenge is to focus on where one is most efficient.”

“The odds of Apple or Google being the dominant players in the next paradigm is zero,” concurred Chris Wasden, Executive Director, Sorenson Center for Discovery and Innovation at the University of Utah.

Lots of other things will have to change to enable the IoT as well. Liu projected that devices will need to operate at near threshold or even sub-threshold voltages, with “thinner” processing overhead, while the integration of more different functions will redefine the system-in-a-chip. Smaller and lower cost devices will require new materials and new architectures, new types of heterogenous integration and wafer-level packaging, and an ecosystem of standard open platforms to ease development. TSMC’s own MEMS development kit has layout rules, but not yet behaviorial rules, always the more challenging issue for these mechanical structures. “That’s the next big thing for us,” he asserted. “These huge gaps mean huge opportunities.”

IDMs and systems companies still likely to dominate                     

Still, the wide variety, and sometimes tricky mechanics and low volumes, of many MEMS devices have been a challenge for the volume foundries.  The fabless MEMS model has seen only limited success so far and is unlikely to see much in the next decade either, countered Jean Christophe Eloy, CEO of Yole Développement, who pointed out that some 75% of the MEMS business is dominated by the four big IDMs who can drive costs down with volumes and diversified product lines. To date, only two fabless companies—InvenSense and Knowles—are among the top 30 MEMS suppliers.

Most of the rest of the top 30 are system makers with their own fabs, making their own MEMS devices to enable higher value system products of their own, which is likely to continue to remain a successful approach, as the opportunities for adding value increasingly come from software, processers, and systems.  “MEMS value has always been at the system level,” noted Eloy.

GE’s recent introduction of an improved MEMS RF switch to significantly reduce the size and cost of its MRI systems is one compelling example, with the potential of the little MEMS component to greatly extend the use of this high-contrast soft-tissue imaging technology.  Though the company sold off its general advanced sensors unit last year to connector maker Amphenol Corp., it is still making its unique RF switch using a special alloy in house in small volumes as a key enabler of its high value MRI systems. These imagers work by aligning the spin of hydrogen nuclei with a strong magnet, tipping them off axis with a strong RF pulse from an antenna, then measuring how they snap back into alignment with lots of localized antennas with low power RF switches close to the body.  “We’re now launching a new receive chain using MEMS RF switches,” reported Tim Nustad, GM and CTO, Global Magnetic Resonance, GE Healthcare. “Later we can see a flexible, light weight MRI blanket.”

Opportunity for smaller, lower power, lower cost technologies

So far, MEMS makers have driven down the cost of devices by continually shrinking the size of the die.  But that may be about to change, as the mechanical moving structures have about reached the limit of how much smaller they can get and still produce the needed quality signal.  That’s opening the door for a new generation of devices using different sensing structures and different manufacturing processes.  For inertial sensors, options include bulk acoustic wave sensing from Qualtre, piezoresistive nanowires from Tronics and CEA/Leti, and even extrapolating gyroscope-like data with software from accelerometers and magnetometers. MCube’s virtual gyro with this approach, now in production with some design wins, claims to save 80% of the power and 50% of the cost of a conventional MEMS gyro.

Piezoelectric sensing, often with PZT films, is also drawing attention, with products in development  for timing devices and microphones. Sand9 claims lower noise and lower power for its piezoelectric MEMS timing, now starting volume manufacturing for Intel and others for shipments in 1Q15.  It has also recently received a patent for piezo microphone, while startup Vesper (formerly known as Baker-Calling and then Sonify) also reports working with a major customer for its piezoelectric MEMS microphone.

More open platforms ease development of new applications of established devices

The maturing ecosystem of open development platforms across the value chain is helping to ease commercialization of new applications. The two latest developments in this infrastructure are a standard interface to connect all kinds of different sensors to the controller, and an open library of basic sensor processing software. The MIPI Alliance brought together major users and suppliers—ranging across STMicroelectronics and InvenSense, to AMD and Intel, to Broadcom and Qualcomm, to Cadence and Mentor Graphics—to agree on an interface specification to make it easier for system designers to connect and manage a wide range of sensors from multiple suppliers while minimizing power consumption of the microcontroller.  Meanwhile, sensor makers and researchers are making a selection of baseline algorithms available for open use to ease development of new products.  Offerings include Freescale’s inertial sensor fusion and PNI Sensors’ heart rate monitoring algorithms, along with other contributions from Analog Devices, Kionix, NIST, UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon to start. The material will be available through the MIG website.

Plenty of companies have also introduced their own individual platforms to ease customer development tasks as well, ranging from MEMS foundries’ inertial sensor manufacturing platforms to processor makers’ development boards and kits. Recently STMicroelectronics also adding its sensor fusion and other software blocks to its development platform.

KegData is one example of a company making use of these platforms to enable development of a solution for a niche problem – an automated system for telling pub owners how much beer is left in their kegs, using a Freescale pressure sensor and development tools. Currently the only way to know when a beer keg is empty is to go lift and weigh or shake it, a problem for efficiently managing expensive refrigerated inventory.  Adding a pressure sensor in the coupler on top of the keg allows the height of the beer to be measured by the differential pressure between the liquid and the gas above it. The sensor then sends the information to a hub controller that communicates with the internet, letting the pub manager know to order more, or even automatically placing the order directly with the distributor.  The startup’s business model is to give the system to distributors for free, but sell them the service of automating inventory management for their customers, saving them the significant expense of sending drivers around to shake the kegs and take pre-orders.

More broadly, MEMS microphones are poised to continue to find a wide range of new applications. IHS’ Bouchaud  pointed out that cars will soon each be using 12-14 MEMS microphone units, to listen for changes in different conditions, while home security applications will use them to detect  security breaches from unusual patterns of sounds, from people in the house to dogs barking. Startup MoboSens says it converts its chemical water quality data into audio signals to feed it into the phone’s mic port for better quality.

Opportunities still for new types of MEMS devices

Growth will also continue to come from new MEMS devices that find additional ways to replace conventional mechanical parts with silicon. Eloy noted that MEMS autofocus units may finally be the next breakout device, as they have started shipping in the last few weeks, and aim at shipping for products in 2015.  MEMS microspeakers are also making progress and could come soon. But ramping new devices to the high volumes demanded by consumer markets is particularly challenging. “The only way to enter the market is with new technology, but high volume consumer markets make entry very hard for new devices,” he said. “The market is saturated, wins depend on production costs, and not everyone can keep up…. The last significant new device was the MEMS microphone, and that was ten years ago.”

But innovative new MEMS technologies also continue to be developed for initial applications in higher margin industrial and biomedical fields. One interesting platform is the MEMS spectrometer from VTT Technical Research Center of Finland.  This robust tunable interferometer essentially consists of an adjustable air gap between two mirrors, made of alternating ALD or LPCVD bands of materials with different defraction indexes, explained Anna Rissanen, VTT research team leader for MOEMS and bioMEMS instruments. The structure can be tuned by different voltages to filter particular bands of light, while a single-point detector, instead of the usual array, enables very small and low cost spectrometers or hyper spectral cameras. VTT spinout Spectral Engines is commercializing near-IR and mid-IR sensors aimed at detecting moisture, hydrocarbons and gases in industrial applications.  Other programs have developed sensors for environmental analysis by flyover by nano satellites and UAVs, sensors for monitoring fuel quality to optimize energy use and prevent engine damage, and sensors that can diagnose melanoma from a scan of the skin.

Keep up with these changing manufacturing technology demands at upcoming MEMS events at SEMICON China 2015, SEMICON Russia 2015, SEMICON West 2015, and at the new European MEMS Summit planned for Milan in September.

The semiconductor equipment and materials industry is currently enjoying a double-digit annual growth rate and good prospects looking forward to 2015.  However, there are huge challenges around the corner with the move from planar to FinFET transistors, with 193nm immersion lithography being pushed well below 14nm, and with an explosion of new materials to integrate, among others.

The SEMI International Technology Partners Conference (ITPC 2014) convened on 9-12 November on the bright and crystalline Kohala Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii.  Like our industry, all looked calm and peaceful – yet just around the corner, the Kilauea Volcano was violently reshaping the landscape with rivers of molten lava in the town of Pahoa.

Living in the shadow of an active volcano and the sometimes spectacularly disruptive process of building an island – or the nano-electronics manufacturing industry in our case – was picked up in this year’s ITPC theme:  New Structures for Innovation.  Wholly new concepts for collaboration and partnerships to address the challenges and to enable innovation were discussed formally in the conference, as well as informally in the many networking opportunities.

The program included keynote presentations by driving IC manufacturers:  Intel, SMIC, SK Hynix, TSMC, and Micron to set the stage for the rest of the program by hitting the key issues:

  • Delivering density scaling benefits in an era of increased capital intensity and materials complexity (Intel and SMIC)
  • Trends in semiconductor development following changes in the mobile market (SK Hynix)
  • Limits of lithography beyond the 10nm node (TSMC)
  • Collaboration for innovation (Micron)

Each of these keynote presentations neatly distilled the related challenges and opportunities and provided richly provocative observations on what is needed to keep innovation as the fundamental enabler.

Beyond the exceptional insights and depth of these presentations, a few “fun facts” were captured below.

  • Intel’s pursuit of 450mmm has had a positive impact on 300mm productivity (Bob Bruck, Intel)
  • China’s overall two highest revenue imports are oil and ICs  (Tzu-Yin Chiu, SMIC)
  • To succeed in today’s IC manufacturing world there needs to be system-level and process-level partnership and collaboration across the extended supply chain  (Sungwook Park, SK Hynix)
  • Of the Fortune 500 companies from 30 years ago, only 15% remain today.  Large companies are often too slow to react to change (Mark Adams, Micron)
  • Facebook and Google are now among the top six server manufacturers in the world (Mark Adams, Micron)

The conference continued with an industry and market outlook segment with special attention to IoT, electric vehicles, and nanoelectronics “connecting lives to improving lives.”  This included some amazing video clips of Nissan’s autonomous driving electric vehicles in Japan traffic, and imec’s intense visualizations of next generation nano-bio applications.

Among the best appreciated sections, was the segment on new industry structure that featured speakers and panelists from Google (David Peterson), Robert Metcalfe (University of Texas), Dan Solomon (Solomon Consulting), and AlixPartners (Dan Fisher). David Peterson brought a perspective from outside of our industry which is useful to test ideas and refresh approaches. He asked the audience to start with the most difficult ideas: make the tough choices, ask the questions that no one else will, and nurture a vibrant, distinctive culture. On making the tough choice, he was specific – and it is indeed tough, “sub-optimize current performance to invest in future performance:  innovations, R&D, learning, leadership development, building an adaptable organization, experimenting with ideas and projects that may not succeed. This segment was capped by Shozo Saito (Toshiba) providing an overview on the connections of new market and industry structure by device platform development.

The final segment focused on technology with Frits van Hout of ASML presenting the EUVL transition from R&D to industrialization. Following this a panel, moderated by Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research, focused on frontiers of technology with panelists Paul Boudre of Soitec, David Hemker of Lam Research, Michael Liehr of CNSE, and Omkaram Nalamasu of Applied Materials.

It was a fascinating conference that both discussed the need and models for new collaboration and partnerships – and brought our industry’s thought leaders together to have opportunities to find these connections during the conference.

A few more interesting “fun facts” “fun bits” from the conference:

  • China plans to spend $100B to build a China-local IC industry that will supply up to 40% of China’s IC consumption.
  • The era of planar technology is coming to an end – and this precipitates great changes.
  • There is virtually no viable small company R&D engine model remaining in ICs and semiconductor equipment.  The model for innovation in our industry has significantly changed in the last five years.
  • Collaborations and partnerships are more essential now than ever before for developing innovation.
  • To build trust in developing partnerships, potential partners should work together and take many small risks together quickly.
  • Among the top innovations in our industry is Moore’s law and inventing SEMI – this is one of the big successes in collaboration and co-opetition.
  • A twelve week cycle from tape-out to finished wafer is too long.  This must change to keep pace with product development innovation.
  • The semiconductor industry should quickly work to define standards/platforms for IOT to ensure the pace of growth and chip consumption
  • A favorite slide was from Google that reminded the audience that to win, we have to view any customer problem as our problem:

ITPC

To participate in other strategic events, consider the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium U.S. 2015 in January or SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium Europe 2015 in February.

A team of researchers led by North Carolina State University has found that  stacking materials that are only one atom thick can create semiconductor junctions that transfer charge efficiently, regardless of whether the crystalline structure of the materials is mismatched – lowering the manufacturing cost for a wide variety of semiconductor devices such as solar cells, lasers and LEDs.

“This work demonstrates that by stacking multiple two-dimensional (2-D) materials in random ways we can create semiconductor junctions that are as functional as those with perfect alignment” says Dr. Linyou Cao, senior author of a paper on the work and an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at NC State.

“This could make the manufacture of semiconductor devices an order of magnitude less expensive.”

Schematic illustration of monolayer MoS2 and WS2 stacked vertically. Image: Linyou Cao.

Schematic illustration of monolayer MoS2 and WS2 stacked vertically. Image: Linyou Cao.

For most semiconductor electronic or photonic devices to work, they need to have a junction, which is where two semiconductor materials are bound together. For example, in photonic devices like solar cells, lasers and LEDs, the junction is where photons are converted into electrons, or vice versa.

All semiconductor junctions rely on efficient charge transfer between materials, to ensure that current flows smoothly and that a minimum of energy is lost during the transfer. To do that in conventional semiconductor junctions, the crystalline structures of both materials need to match. However, that limits the materials that can be used, because you need to make sure the crystalline structures are compatible. And that limited number of material matches restricts the complexity and range of possible functions for semiconductor junctions.

“But we found that the crystalline structure doesn’t matter if you use atomically thin, 2-D materials,” Cao says. “We used molybdenum sulfide and tungsten sulfide for this experiment, but this is a fundamental discovery that we think applies to any 2-D semiconductor material. That means you can use any combination of two or more semiconductor materials, and you can stack them randomly but still get efficient charge transfer between the materials.”

Currently, creating semiconductor junctions means perfectly matching crystalline structures between materials – which requires expensive equipment, sophisticated processing methods and user expertise. This manufacturing cost is a major reason why semiconductor devices such as solar cells, lasers and LEDs remain very expensive. But stacking 2-D materials doesn’t require the crystalline structures to match.

“It’s as simple as stacking pieces of paper on top of each other – it doesn’t even matter if the edges of the paper line up,” Cao says.

The paper, “Equally Efficient Interlayer Exciton Relaxation and Improved Absorption in Epitaxial and Non-epitaxial MoS2/WS2 Heterostructures,” was published as a “just-accepted” manuscript in Nano Letters Dec. 3.

Lead authors of the paper are Yifei Yu, a Ph.D. student at NC State; Dr. Shi Hu, a former postdoctoral researcher at NC State; and Liqin Su, a Ph.D. student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The paper was co-authored by Lujun Huang, Yi Liu, Zhenghe Jin, and Dr. Ki Wook Kim of NC State; Drs. Alexander Puretzky and David Geohegan of Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and Dr. Yong Zhang of UNC Charlotte. The research was funded by the U.S. Army Research Office under grant number W911NF-13-1-0201 and the National Science Foundation under grant number DMR-1352028.

Murata Electronics North America, Inc. and Peregrine Semiconductor Corporation, founder of RF silicon on insulator (SOI) and pioneer of advanced RF solutions, today announce that Murata has acquired all outstanding shares of Peregrine. The cash transaction paid the holders of Peregrine common shares $12.50 per share.

Peregrine will continue to market its high-performance, integrated RF solutions under the Peregrine brand, as a wholly owned subsidiary of Murata Electronics North America, Inc. Peregrine solutions leverage the UltraCMOS technology platform, a patented, advanced form of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) that delivers the monolithic integration and superior performance necessary to solve the world’s toughest RF challenges. Peregrine will continue to offer its integrated RF solutions to markets such as communications (mobile, wireless infrastructure, land mobile radio, broadband and wireless), industrial (test and measurement, automotive, Internet of Things) and aerospace. With the close of this acquisition, Murata gains Peregrine’s strong intellectual property portfolio, which contains over 180 filed and pending patents.

“Today, we deepen our existing partnership and officially welcome Peregrine Semiconductor to the Murata family,” said Norio Nakajima, Executive Vice President, Director of Communication Business Unit of Murata. “With this acquisition, we combine Murata’s world-leading mobile RF module capabilities with Peregrine’s best-in-class RF products. We’re eager to leverage Peregrine’s innovations, such as the industry’s first reconfigurable RF front-end system UltraCMOS Global 1, and expand the Murata business into all the markets that Peregrine currently offers RF solutions. This acquisition further defines our stance as an ‘Innovator in Electronics’.”

“After years of a successful partnership, we’re happy to become a part of the Murata team, the world’s leading RF module and filter provider,” said Jim Cable, PhD, President and CEO of Peregrine Semiconductor. “Murata already has deep relationships and trust built in all of our target markets. We believe we can offer their customer base exciting new RF capabilities.  With the reach of Murata products and the power of our UltraCMOS technology, we believe we will change the course of RF history. In the case of mobile, it will speed the industry’s transition to an integrated, all-CMOS RF front-end. Together, we’re looking forward to accomplishing great things.”

Founded in 1944 in Kyoto, Japan, Murata celebrated its 70th anniversary in October. Murata has grown into a global enterprise composed of 101 companies in 23 nations. As an “Innovator in Electronics,” Murata designs, manufactures and supplies advanced electronic materials, leading-edge electronic components and multi-functional, high-density modules. Murata innovations can be found in a wide range of applications from mobile phones to home appliances, and automotive applications to energy management systems and healthcare devices.

Initially focused on the military, uncooled thermal camera sales have grown significantly due to substantial cost reduction of micro bolometers and growing adoption in commercial markets, including thermography, automotive and surveillance applications. The market research and strategy consulting company, Yole Développement (Yole) confirmed this growth last July: indeed, Yole announced +25% CAGR between 2014 and 2019 in its infrared imaging report, Uncooled Infrared Imaging Technology Market (Ed. July 2014).

In this report, Yole’s analysts also highlighted the consumer applications: this market has moved to a new phase of growth in 2013-2014. Under this context, FLIR introduced in 2014, two disruptive technologies: the LEPTON core and FLIR ONE smartphone plugin.

“A high number of pre-release reservations for FLIR ONE (more than 30K units in July 2014) already confirms the commercial success of this innovation,” said Yole.

System Plus Consulting (System Plus), a sister company of Yole, specialized in technology and electronic components and systems cost analysis, looked into new FLIR’s products and proposes today a complete teardown analysis, entitled System Plus’ report details the bill-of-material (BOM), the manufacturing process flow and related cost analysis, the supply chain evolution and a comparison with FLIR i7 infrared camera and microbolometer sensors. FLIR Systems FLIR ONE & LEPTON Consumer Thermal Imager with Microbolometer. FLIR is the world’s largest long wave IR (LWIR) camera manufacturer and main microbolometer supplier, and as such it drives the price war in the commercial market.

“FLIR’s strategy is to take volume leadership in multiple markets, make economies of scale and further decrease price,” explained Michel Allain, CEO, System Plus, the reverse costing & engineering company. “To achieve this it exploits a vertically-integrated business model and a fabless structure, with manufacturing subcontracted to ON Semiconductor,” he added.

FLIR also boosted that strategy by acquiring Indigo System’s IR imager business in 2004 and Tessera’s Digital Optics wafer-level optics (WLO) division in 2013.

This year, the company released two innovative solutions: the Lepton core and FLIR ONETM smartphone plugin. Plugged into the back of an iPhone 5 or 5S, the FLIR ONETM is the first consumer thermal camera featuring LWIR technology. It contains a visible VGA (640×480) camera and a thermal camera which provide images blended using FLIR MSX Technology.

The thermal camera uses FLIR’s new Lepton core, where costs have been reduced in every element. The most expensive component, the sensor, is an uncooled vanadium-oxide (VOx) microbolometer, featuring an 80×60 pixel resolution with 17μm pixel size. Vox provides a high temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) and low 1/f noise, resulting in excellent thermal sensitivity and stable uniformity. The microbolometer array is grown monolithically on top of a readout integrated circuit (ROIC) to comprise the complete focal plane array (FPA). An anti-reflection (AR) coated window is bonded above the sensor array via a wafer-level packaging (WLP) process, encapsulating the array in a vacuum. The purpose of the vacuum is to provide high thermal resistance between the microbolometer elements and the ROIC substrate, allowing for maximum temperature change in response to incident radiation.

The system electronics that receive and process the signal is a custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) device mounted in flip-chip on the substrate. Digital Optics’ WLO brings an important part of the cost reduction. The silicon lenses are made at the wafer level with lithography and etching processes. The final cost reduction comes from the core housing, which is a three-dimensional molded interconnected device (3D-MID). Incorporating a conductive circuit pattern inside the housing provides grounding and allows FLIR to integrate a temperature sensor.

“Thanks to its strong integration at the core level with innovative WLO, wafer-level packaging (WLP) and custom ASIC use, the FLIR Lepton is the world’s smallest microbolometer-based thermal imaging camera core,” comments Romain Fraux, Project Manager, MEMS Devices, IC’s and Advanced Packaging, System Plus.

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Intel announces IoT platform


December 11, 2014

Intel Corporation today announced the Intel IoT Platform, an end-to-end reference model designed to unify and simplify connectivity and security for the Internet of Things (IoT). Intel also introduced integrated hardware and software products based on the new platform and new relationships with an expanded ecosystem of system integrators that promise to move IoT from infancy to mass deployment.

The new offerings and relationships will make it easier for solution providers to move IoT from pockets of pilots to mainstream deployments with a repeatable foundation of building blocks that can be customized for limitless solutions. Data will be unlocked faster to extract meaningful information and value for consumers and businesses.

For example, Rudin Management, a New York City real estate company who developed its own system software called DiBoss, has demonstrated that it can intelligently manage energy and other systems in its buildings. In one year, in one building, the company saved nearly $1 million to its bottom line, which would translate to a savings of 50 cents for every square foot of real estate it owns and manages.

“The power of IoT on our company’s business will have significant impact,” said John Gilbert, COO, Rudin Management. “We are a real estate company that used to dabble in technology, but now because of IoT, we are a technology company that dabbles in real estate.”

Horizontal Approach to IoT
The Intel IoT Platform helps deliver innovations to market faster, reducing solution complexity, and delivering actionable intelligence faster by offering a defined, repeatable foundation for how devices will connect and deliver trusted data to the cloud.

“With this platform we are continuing to expand our IoT product family beyond silicon with enhancements to our pre-integrated solutions that make IoT more accessible to solution providers,” said Doug Davis, vice president and general manager, Internet of Things Group, Intel. “IoT is a rapidly growing market but faces scalability hurdles. By simplifying the development process and making it easier to deploy new solutions that address market needs, we can help accelerate innovation.”

Expanding IoT Ecosystem
IoT has enormous potential to drive economic value and social change, but no company can do it alone. A robust ecosystem is needed to scale. To that end, Intel announced new solutions and relationships to boost the IoT ecosystem. Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, Capgemini, Dell, HCL, NTT DATA, SAP, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Wipro and others are joining together with Intel to develop and deploy solutions using their building blocks on the Intel IoT Platform. These solutions will help provide a repeatable foundation for IoT and free up developers’ time to focus on building solutions that expertly address specific customer pain points.

“Accenture is focused on helping clients realize the business value of the IoT as quickly and easily as possible,” said Mike Sutcliff, group chief executive, Accenture Digital. “Our combined capabilities can help us achieve that, and can also help clients get around some of the biggest roadblocks to IoT adoption by offering a simpler, faster way to roll out end to end IoT solutions than currently exists. Together, we can enable clients to define a clear value strategy for the IoT, and by using Accenture’s industry experience and digital assets to complement Intel’s IoT platform, we can create robust, end-to-end frameworks designed to overcome challenges associated with security, scalability and interoperability in IoT implementations.”

Integrated Hardware and Software
Intel is also delivering a roadmap of integrated hardware and software products to support the Intel IoT Platform. Spanning from edge devices out to the cloud, the roadmap includes API management and service creation software, edge-to-cloud connectivity and analytics, intelligent gateways, and a full line of scalable IA processors. Security is fundamental to the roadmap with both dedicated security products and security features embedded into hardware and software products.

Intel is evolving and optimizing this product roadmap to work seamlessly together with building blocks from the ecosystem to address the key challenges solution providers are facing when implementing IoT, including interoperability, security and connectivity.

The new products from Intel include:

  • Wind River Edge Management System provides cloud connectivity to facilitate device configuration, file transfers, data capture and rules-based data analysis and response. This pre-integrated technology stack enables customers to quickly build industry-specific IoT solutions and integrate disparate enterprise IT systems, utilizing API management. The cloud-based middleware runs from the embedded device up through the cloud to reduce time to market and total cost of ownership.
  • The latest Intel® IoT Gateway will integrate the Wind River Edge Management System via an available agent so gateways can be rapidly deployed, provisioned and managed throughout the life cycle of a system to reduce costs and time to market. In addition, the gateway includes performance improvements, support for lower cost memory options and a broader selection of available communication options. Intel IoT Gateways are currently available from seven ODMs with 13 more releasing systems in early 2015.
  • To get value out of the data generated in deployments using the Intel® IoT Platform, developers need a powerful yet easy-to-use approach to big data analytics. Intel is expanding its cloud analytics support for IoT Developer Kits to include the Intel® IoT Gateway series, in addition to Intel® Galileo boards and Intel® Edison Modules. Cloud analytics enables IoT application developers to detect trends and anomalies in time series at big data scale.
  • McAfee, a part of Intel Security, announced Enhanced Security for Intel IoT Gateways in support of the Intel IoT Platform. This pre-validated solution adds advanced security management for gateway devices.
  • Intel Security also announced that its Enhanced Privacy Identity (EPID) technology will be promoted to other silicon vendors. EPID has anonymity properties, in addition to hardware-enforced integrity, and is included in ISO and TCG standards. The EPID technology provides an on-ramp for other devices to securely connect to the Intel IoT Platform.
  • The Intel API and Traffic Management solution utilizes Intel Mashery solutions to enable creation of building blocks that make it easy to build new software applications. Customers of the Intel IoT Platform today have access to the Intel Mashery API management tools to create data APIs that can be shared internally, externally with partners or monetized as revenue-generating data services for customers.
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Intel is working to create a robust, scalable IoT ecosystem.