Category Archives: MEMS

The success and proliferation of integrated circuits has largely hinged on the ability of IC manufacturers to continue offering more performance and functionality for the money.  Driving down the cost of ICs (on a per-function or per-performance basis) is inescapably tied to a growing arsenal of technologies and wafer-fab manufacturing disciplines as mainstream CMOS processes reach their theoretical, practical, and economic limits. Among the many levers being pulled by IC designers and manufacturers are: feature-size reductions, introduction of new materials and transistor structures, migration to larger-diameter silicon wafers, higher throughput in fab equipment, increased factory automation, three-dimensional integration of circuitry and chips, and advanced IC packaging and holistic system-driven design approaches.

For logic-oriented processes, companies are fabricating leading-edge devices such as high-performance microprocessors, low-power application processors, and other advanced logic devices using the 14nm and 10nm generations (Figure 1).  There is more variety than ever among the processes companies offer, making it challenging to compare them in a fair and useful way.  Moreover, “plus” or derivative versions of each process generation and half steps between major nodes have become regular occurrences.

For five decades, the industry has enjoyed exponential improvements in the productivity and performance of integrated circuit technology.  While the industry has continued to surmount obstacles put in front of it, the barriers are getting bigger.  Feature size reduction, wafer diameter increases, and yield improvement all have physical or statistical limits, or more commonly…economic limits.  Therefore, IC companies continue to wring every bit of productivity out of existing processes before looking to major technological advances to solve problems.

The growing design and manufacturing challenges and costs have divided the integrated circuit world into the haves and have-nots.  In the June 1999 Update to The McClean Report, IC Insights first described its “Inverted Pyramid” theory, where it was stated that the IC industry was in the early stages of a new era characterized by dramatic restructuring and change.  It was stated that the marketshare makeup in various IC product segments was becoming “top heavy,” with the shares held by top producers leaving very little room for remaining competitors. Although the Update described the emerging inverted pyramid phenomenon from a marketshare perspective, an analogous trend can be seen regarding IC process development and fabrication capabilities. The industry has evolved to the point where only a very small group of companies can develop leading-edge process technologies and fabricate leading-edge ICs.

Figure 1

Figure 1

Nanoscale light sources and nanoantennas already found a wide range of applications in several areas, such as ultra compact pixels, optical detection or telecommunications. However, the fabrication of nanostructure-based devices is rather complicated since the materials typically used have a limited luminescence efficiency. What is more, single quantum dots or molecules usually emit light non-directionally and weakly. An even more challenging task is placing a nanoscale light source precisely near a nanoantenna.

A research group from ITMO University managed to combine a nanoantenna and a light source in a single nanoparticle. It can generate, enhance and route emission via excited resonant modes coupled with excitons. “We used hybrid perovskite as a material for such nanoantennas,” says Ekaterina Tiguntseva, first author of the publication. “Unique features of perovskite enabled us to make nanoantennas from this material. We basically synthesized perovskite films, and then transferred material particles from the film surface to another substrate by means of pulsed laser ablation technique. Compared to alternatives, our method is relatively simple and cost-effective.”

While studying the obtained perovskite nanoparticles, the scientists discovered that their emission can be enhanced if its spectra match with the Mie-resonant mode. “Currently, scientists are particularly interested in Mie-resonances related to dielectric and semiconductor nanoparticles,” explains George Zograf, Engineer at the Laboratory of Hybrid Nanophotonics and Optoelectronics at ITMO University. “Perovskites used in our work are semiconductors with luminescence efficiency much higher than that of many other materials. Our study shows that combination of excitons with Mie resonance in perovskite nanoparticles makes them efficient light sources at room temperature.”

In addition, the radiation spectrum of the nanoparticles can be changed by varying the anions in the material. “The structure of the material remains the same, we simply use another component in the synthesis of perovskite films. Therefore, it is not necessary to adjust the method each time. It remains the same, yet the emission color of our nanoparticles changes,” says Ekaterina.

The scientists will continue research on light-emitting perovskite nanoantennas using various components for their synthesis. In addition, they are developing new designs of perovskite nanostructures which may improve ultra compact optical devices.

Computer algorithms might be performing brain-like functions, such as facial recognition and language translation, but the computers themselves have yet to operate like brains.

“Computers have separate processing and memory storage units, whereas the brain uses neurons to perform both functions,” said Northwestern University’s Mark C. Hersam. “Neural networks can achieve complicated computation with significantly lower energy consumption compared to a digital computer.”

This is the memtransistor symbol overlaid on an artistic rendering of a hypothetical circuit layout in the shape of a brain. Credit: Hersam Research Group

This is the memtransistor symbol overlaid on an artistic rendering of a hypothetical circuit layout in the shape of a brain. Credit: Hersam Research Group

In recent years, researchers have searched for ways to make computers more neuromorphic, or brain-like, in order to perform increasingly complicated tasks with high efficiency. Now Hersam, a Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, and his team are bringing the world closer to realizing this goal.

The research team has developed a novel device called a “memtransistor,” which operates much like a neuron by performing both memory and information processing. With combined characteristics of a memristor and transistor, the memtransistor also encompasses multiple terminals that operate more similarly to a neural network.

Supported by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation, the research was published online today, February 22, in Nature. Vinod K. Sangwan and Hong-Sub Lee, postdoctoral fellows advised by Hersam, served as the paper’s co-first authors.

The memtransistor builds upon work published in 2015, in which Hersam, Sangwan, and their collaborators used single-layer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) to create a three-terminal, gate-tunable memristor for fast, reliable digital memory storage. Memristor, which is short for “memory resistors,” are resistors in a current that “remember” the voltage previously applied to them. Typical memristors are two-terminal electronic devices, which can only control one voltage channel. By transforming it into a three-terminal device, Hersam paved the way for memristors to be used in more complex electronic circuits and systems, such as neuromorphic computing.

To develop the memtransistor, Hersam’s team again used atomically thin MoS2 with well-defined grain boundaries, which influence the flow of current. Similar to the way fibers are arranged in wood, atoms are arranged into ordered domains – called “grains” – within a material. When a large voltage is applied, the grain boundaries facilitate atomic motion, causing a change in resistance.

“Because molybdenum disulfide is atomically thin, it is easily influenced by applied electric fields,” Hersam explained. “This property allows us to make a transistor. The memristor characteristics come from the fact that the defects in the material are relatively mobile, especially in the presence of grain boundaries.”

But unlike his previous memristor, which used individual, small flakes of MoS2, Hersam’s memtransistor makes use of a continuous film of polycrystalline MoS2 that comprises a large number of smaller flakes. This enabled the research team to scale up the device from one flake to many devices across an entire wafer.

“When length of the device is larger than the individual grain size, you are guaranteed to have grain boundaries in every device across the wafer,” Hersam said. “Thus, we see reproducible, gate-tunable memristive responses across large arrays of devices.”

After fabricating memtransistors uniformly across an entire wafer, Hersam’s team added additional electrical contacts. Typical transistors and Hersam’s previously developed memristor each have three terminals. In their new paper, however, the team realized a seven-terminal device, in which one terminal controls the current among the other six terminals.

“This is even more similar to neurons in the brain,” Hersam said, “because in the brain, we don’t usually have one neuron connected to only one other neuron. Instead, one neuron is connected to multiple other neurons to form a network. Our device structure allows multiple contacts, which is similar to the multiple synapses in neurons.”

Next, Hersam and his team are working to make the memtransistor faster and smaller. Hersam also plans to continue scaling up the device for manufacturing purposes.

“We believe that the memtransistor can be a foundational circuit element for new forms of neuromorphic computing,” he said. “However, making dozens of devices, as we have done in our paper, is different than making a billion, which is done with conventional transistor technology today. Thus far, we do not see any fundamental barriers that will prevent further scale up of our approach.”

By Emmy Yi, SEMI Taiwan

 

Since Apple unveiled iPhone X with face-recognition functionality in early November 2017, interest in 3D sensing technology has reached fever pitch and attracted huge investments across the related supply chains. The global market for 3D depth sensing is estimated at US$1.5 billion in 2017 and will grow at a CAGR of 209 percent to US$14 billion in 2020, Trendforce estimates. This trend pushes up demand for Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL), a key component for 3D depth sensing technology. SEMI estimates that the global VCSEL market will grow at a CAGR of 17.3 percent between 2016 and 2022, and the total value of the market is expected to reach US$1 billion by 2022.

This SEMI 3D Depth Sensing & VCSEL Technology Seminar attracted more than 600 industry experts.

This SEMI 3D Depth Sensing & VCSEL Technology Seminar attracted more than 600 industry experts.

In light of the significant market growth potential and business opportunities, SEMI Taiwan recently organized the 3D Depth Sensing & VCSEL Technology Seminar, where industry experts from Qualcomm, Lumentum, Himax, Vertilite and IQE gathered to explore the technology trends and potentials from different perspectives. Following are the key takeaways from the Forum:

Not just iPhoneX! Expect a boom in 3D depth sensing

The real-time and depth cue feature of the 3D sensor is essential to enable the next-generation computer vision (CV) applications. Improvements in 3D recognition, machine learning, and 3D image segmentation promise to stoke significant growth across a wide range of applications including long-range automotive LiDAR, short-distance AR/VR devices, facial recognition in the low-light environment inside a car and more.

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Improvements in component R&D, algorithm writing, and supply chain integration will further expand the 3D sensing market.

Why VCSELs?

Structured light and time of flight (TOF) are currently the two key approaches to 3D sensing, and VCSEL is the core light source for both technologies. VCSEL’s advantages of small footprint, low cost, low power consumption, circular beam shape, optical efficiency, wavelength stability over temperature and high modulating rate are all indispensable for 3D sensing to flourish. In the longer term, improvements in component R&D, algorithm writing, and supply chain integration will further expand the 3D sensing market.

Optimistic about the proliferation of 3D sensing applications, The SEMI Taiwan Power and Compound Semiconductor Committee plans to organize a special interest group to better respond to technology evolution and rising applications of the emerging optoelectronic semiconductor and to drive innovations and development of the industry. SEMICON Taiwan 2018 will also include a theme pavilion and a series of events to enable more communications and collaborations. To learn more, please contact Emmy Yi, SEMI Taiwan, at [email protected] or +886.3.560.1777 #205.

A silicon-based quantum computing device could be closer than ever due to a new experimental device that demonstrates the potential to use light as a messenger to connect quantum bits of information — known as qubits — that are not immediately adjacent to each other. The feat is a step toward making quantum computing devices from silicon, the same material used in today’s smartphones and computers.

In a step forward for quantum computing in silicon -- the same material used in today's computers -- researchers successfully coupled a single electron's spin, represented by the dot on the left, to light, represented as a wave passing over the electron, which is trapped in a double-welled silicon chamber known as a quantum dot. The goal is to use light to carry quantum information to other locations on a futuristic quantum computing chip. Credit: Image courtesy of Emily Edwards, University of Maryland.

In a step forward for quantum computing in silicon — the same material used in today’s computers — researchers successfully coupled a single electron’s spin, represented by the dot on the left, to light, represented as a wave passing over the electron, which is trapped in a double-welled silicon chamber known as a quantum dot. The goal is to use light to carry quantum information to other locations on a futuristic quantum computing chip. Credit: Image courtesy of Emily Edwards, University of Maryland.

The research, published in the journal Nature, was led by researchers at Princeton University in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Konstanz in Germany and the Joint Quantum Institute, which is a partnership of the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The team created qubits from single electrons trapped in silicon chambers known as double quantum dots. By applying a magnetic field, they showed they could transfer quantum information, encoded in the electron property known as spin, to a particle of light, or photon, opening the possibility of transmitting the quantum information.

“This is a breakout year for silicon spin qubits,” said Jason Petta, professor of physics at Princeton. “This work expands our efforts in a whole new direction, because it takes you out of living in a two-dimensional landscape, where you can only do nearest-neighbor coupling, and into a world of all-to-all connectivity,” he said. “That creates flexibility in how we make our devices.”

Quantum devices offer computational possibilities that are not possible with today’s computers, such as factoring large numbers and simulating chemical reactions. Unlike conventional computers, the devices operate according to the quantum mechanical laws that govern very small structures such as single atoms and sub-atomic particles. Major technology firms are already building quantum computers based on superconducting qubits and other approaches.

“This result provides a path to scaling up to more complex systems following the recipe of the semiconductor industry,” said Guido Burkard, professor of physics at the University of Konstanz, who provided guidance on theoretical aspects in collaboration with Monica Benito, a postdoctoral researcher. “That is the vision, and this is a very important step.”

Jacob Taylor, a member of the team and a fellow at the Joint Quantum Institute, likened the light to a wire that can connect spin qubits. “If you want to make a quantum computing device using these trapped electrons, how do you send information around on the chip? You need the quantum computing equivalent of a wire.”

Silicon spin qubits are more resilient than competing qubit technologies to outside disturbances such as heat and vibrations, which disrupt inherently fragile quantum states. The simple act of reading out the results of a quantum calculation can destroy the quantum state, a phenomenon known as “quantum demolition.”

The researchers theorize that the current approach may avoid this problem because it uses light to probe the state of the quantum system. Light is already used as a messenger to bring cable and internet signals into homes via fiber optic cables, and it is also being used to connect superconducting qubit systems, but this is one of the first applications in silicon spin qubits.

In these qubits, information is represented by the electron’s spin, which can point up or down. For example, a spin pointing up could represent a 0 and a spin pointing down could represent a 1. Conventional computers, in contrast, use the electron’s charge to encode information.

Connecting silicon-based qubits so that they can talk to each other without destroying their information has been a challenge for the field. Although the Princeton-led team successfully coupled two neighboring electron spins separated by only 100 nanometers (100 billionths of a meter), as published in Science in December 2017, coupling spin to light, which would enable long-distance spin-spin coupling, has remained a challenge until now.

In the current study, the team solved the problem of long-distance communication by coupling the qubit’s information — that is, whether the spin points up or down — to a particle of light, or photon, which is trapped above the qubit in the chamber. The photon’s wave-like nature allows it to oscillate above the qubit like an undulating cloud.

Graduate student Xiao Mi and colleagues figured out how to link the information about the spin’s direction to the photon, so that the light can pick up a message, such as “spin points up,” from the qubit. “The strong coupling of a single spin to a single photon is an extraordinarily difficult task akin to a perfectly choreographed dance,” Mi said. “The interaction between the participants — spin, charge and photon — needs to be precisely engineered and protected from environmental noise, which has not been possible until now.” The team at Princeton included postdoctoral fellow Stefan Putz and graduate student David Zajac.

The advance was made possible by tapping into light’s electromagnetic wave properties. Light consists of oscillating electric and magnetic fields, and the researchers succeeded in coupling the light’s electric field to the electron’s spin state.

The researchers did so by building on team’s finding published in December 2016 in the journal Science that demonstrated coupling between a single electron charge and a single particle of light.

To coax the qubit to transmit its spin state to the photon, the researchers place the electron spin in a large magnetic field gradient such that the electron spin has a different orientation depending on which side of the quantum dot it occupies. The magnetic field gradient, combined with the charge coupling demonstrated by the group in 2016, couples the qubit’s spin direction to the photon’s electric field.

Ideally, the photon will then deliver the message to another qubit located within the chamber. Another possibility is that the photon’s message could be carried through wires to a device that reads out the message. The researchers are working on these next steps in the process.

Several steps are still needed before making a silicon-based quantum computer, Petta said. Everyday computers process billions of bits, and although qubits are more computationally powerful, most experts agree that 50 or more qubits are needed to achieve quantum supremacy, where quantum computers would start to outshine their classical counterparts.

Daniel Loss, a professor of physics at the University of Basel in Switzerland who is familiar with the work but not directly involved, said: “The work by Professor Petta and collaborators is one of the most exciting breakthroughs in the field of spin qubits in recent years. I have been following Jason’s work for many years and I’m deeply impressed by the standards he has set for the field, and once again so with this latest experiment to appear in Nature. It is a big milestone in the quest of building a truly powerful quantum computer as it opens up a pathway for cramming hundreds of millions of qubits on a square-inch chip. These are very exciting developments for the field ¬– and beyond.”

A new smart and responsive material can stiffen up like a worked-out muscle, say the Iowa State University engineers who developed it.

Stress a muscle and it gets stronger. Mechanically stress the rubbery material – say with a twist or a bend – and the material automatically stiffens by up to 300 percent, the engineers said. In lab tests, mechanical stresses transformed a flexible strip of the material into a hard composite that can support 50 times its own weight.

Examples of the new smart material, left to right: A flexible strip; a flexible strip that stiffened when twisted; a flexible strip transformed into a hard composite that can hold up a weight. Credit: Christopher Gannon/Iowa State University

Examples of the new smart material, left to right: A flexible strip; a flexible strip that stiffened when twisted; a flexible strip transformed into a hard composite that can hold up a weight. Credit: Christopher Gannon/Iowa State University

This new composite material doesn’t need outside energy sources such as heat, light or electricity to change its properties. And it could be used in a variety of ways, including applications in medicine and industry.

The material is described in a paper recently published online by the scientific journal Materials Horizons. The lead authors are Martin Thuo and Michael Bartlett, Iowa State assistant professors of materials science and engineering. First authors are Boyce Chang and Ravi Tutika, Iowa State doctoral students in materials science and engineering. Chang is also a student associate of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory.

Iowa State startup funds for Thuo and Bartlett supported development of the new material. Thuo’s Black & Veatch faculty fellowship also helped support the project.

Development of the material combined Thuo’s expertise in micro-sized, liquid-metal particles with Bartlett’s expertise in soft materials such as rubbers, plastics and gels.

It’s a powerful combination.

The researchers found a simple, low-cost way to produce particles of undercooled metal – that’s metal that remains liquid even below its melting temperature. The tiny particles (they’re just 1 to 20 millionths of a meter across) are created by exposing droplets of melted metal to oxygen, creating an oxidation layer that coats the droplets and stops the liquid metal from turning solid. They also found ways to mix the liquid-metal particles with a rubbery elastomer material without breaking the particles.

When this hybrid material is subject to mechanical stresses – pushing, twisting, bending, squeezing – the liquid-metal particles break open. The liquid metal flows out of the oxide shell, fuses together and solidifies.

“You can squeeze these particles just like a balloon,” Thuo said. “When they pop, that’s what makes the metal flow and solidify.”

The result, Bartlett said, is a “metal mesh that forms inside the material.”

Thuo and Bartlett said the popping point can be tuned to make the liquid metal flow after varying amounts of mechanical stress. Tuning could involve changing the metal used, changing the particle sizes or changing the soft material.

In this case, the liquid-metal particles contain Field’s metal, an alloy of bismuth, indium and tin. But Thuo said other metals will work, too.

“The idea is that no matter what metal you can get to undercool, you’ll get the same behavior,” he said.

The engineers say the new material could be used in medicine to support delicate tissues or in industry to protect valuable sensors. There could also be uses in soft and bio-inspired robotics or reconfigurable and wearable electronics. The Iowa State University Research Foundation is working to patent the material and it is available for licensing.

“A device with this material can flex up to a certain amount of load,” Bartlett said. “But if you continue stressing it, the elastomer will stiffen and stop or slow down these forces.”

And that, the engineers say, is how they’re putting some muscle in their new smart material.

 

Engineers at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Oregon State University are developing a new method of processing nanomaterials that could lead to faster and cheaper manufacturing of flexible thin film devices – from touch screens to window coatings, according to a new study.

The “intense pulsed light sintering” method uses high-energy light over an area nearly 7,000 times larger than a laser to fuse nanomaterials in seconds. Nanomaterials are materials characterized by their tiny size, measured in nanometers. A nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter, or about 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

The existing method of pulsed light fusion uses temperatures of around 250 degrees Celsius (482 degrees Fahrenheit) to fuse silver nanospheres into structures that conduct electricity. But the new study, published in RSC Advances and led by Rutgers School of Engineering doctoral student Michael Dexter, showed that fusion at 150 degrees Celsius (302 degrees Fahrenheit) works well while retaining the conductivity of the fused silver nanomaterials.

The engineers’ achievement started with silver nanomaterials of different shapes: long, thin rods called nanowires in addition to nanospheres. The sharp reduction in temperature needed for fusion makes it possible to use low-cost, temperature-sensitive plastic substrates like polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polycarbonate in flexible devices, without damaging them.

“Pulsed light sintering of nanomaterials enables really fast manufacturing of flexible devices for economies of scale,” said Rajiv Malhotra, the study’s senior author and assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Rutgers-New Brunswick. “Our innovation extends this capability by allowing cheaper temperature-sensitive substrates to be used.”

Fused silver nanomaterials are used to conduct electricity in devices such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, display devices and solar cells. Flexible forms of these products rely on fusion of conductive nanomaterials on flexible substrates, or platforms, such as plastics and other polymers.

“The next step is to see whether other nanomaterial shapes, including flat flakes and triangles, will drive fusion temperatures even lower,” Malhotra said.

In another study, published in Scientific Reports, the Rutgers and Oregon State engineers demonstrated pulsed light sintering of copper sulfide nanoparticles, a semiconductor, to make films less than 100 nanometers thick.

“We were able to perform this fusion in two to seven seconds compared with the minutes to hours it normally takes now,” said Malhotra, the study’s senior author. “We also showed how to use the pulsed light fusion process to control the electrical and optical properties of the film.”

Their discovery could speed up the manufacturing of copper sulfide thin films used in window coatings that control solar infrared light, transistors and switches, according to the study. This work was funded by the National Science Foundation and The Walmart Manufacturing Innovation Foundation.

The 2018 FLEXI Awards today recognized groundbreaking accomplishments in the Flexible Hybrid Electronics (FHE) sector in 2017. Presented at the opening session of the 17th annual 2018FLEX Conference and Exhibition, in Monterey, California, the awards spotlighted the following leaders in the categories of R&D Achievements, Product Innovation and Commercialization, Education Leadership and Industry Leadership.

Product Innovation – E Ink, creator of Dazzle, the world’s largest electronic paper installation, won a FLEXI for product design and ingenuity, and potential market adoption and revenue generation. Made from electrophoretic display technology, the programmable art installation adorns one side of San Diego International Airport’s new rental car center.

R&D Achievement – The Wearable Device for Dynamic Assessment of Hydration team – consisting of GE Global Research, UES, The University of Arizona, University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Dublin City University and AFRL – won a FLEXI for developing a paper-based biofluid patch that collects sweat for human hydration index monitoring. Award criteria included research approach, originality and commercial potential for expanding the bounds of flexible or printed electronics.

Technology Leadership In Education – James Turner, research scientist at Binghamton University, won a FLEXI for outstanding leadership and attention to mentoring students during the development of an FHE electrocardiography (ECG) patch. Turner led a group of students through the development which included a multi-disciplinary approach as well as coordination with industry and several academic institutions to correlate reliability data, simulations and optimize design features of the revolutionary patch.

Industry Leadership – David Morton, formerly with the Army Research Laboratory, won a FLEXI for his dedication to building awareness of advanced flexible hybrid electronics in the broader field of electronics. Award criteria include outstanding leadership in public forums and contributions to industry associations.

Technology Champion – Robert Reuss, former program manager in the Microsystems Technology Office at DARPA, won a FLEXI for his extraordinary dedication to growing the flexible electronics industry, early recognition of the impact of large area electronics and strong contributions to helping build the FLEX Conference.

FLEXIs have been the industry’s premier award for distinguished organizations and individuals since 2009. See full list of awardees. The FLEXI Awards are sponsored by FlexTech, a SEMI Strategic Association Partner, an organization dedicated to the success of the FHE sector. The 2018 FLEXI award ceremony was sponsored by SCREEN Holdings.

2018FLEX – February 12-15 in Monterey, California – spotlights FHE innovation drivers in smart medtech, smart transportation, smart manufacturing, smart data, Internet of Things (IoT) and consumer electronics.

CEA-Leti’s chief scientist today issued a forward-looking call to action for the microelectronics industry to create a radically new, digital-communication architecture for the Internet of Things in which “a great deal of analytics processing occurs at the edge and at the end devices instead of in the Cloud”.

Delivering a keynote presentation at the kickoff of ISSCC 2018, Barbara De Salvo said this architecture will include human-brain inspired hardware coupled to new computing paradigms and algorithms that “will allow for distributed intelligence over the whole IoT network, all-the-way down to ultralow-power end-devices.”

“We are entering a new era where artificial-intelligence systems are … shaping the future world,” said De Salvo, who also is Leti’s scientific director. “With the end of Moore’s Law in sight, transformative approaches are needed to address the enduring power-efficiency issues of traditional computing architectures.”

The potential efficiencies of processing data at the edge of networks – e.g. by small computers located near IoT-connected devices – rather than at distant data centers or the Cloud are increasingly cited as long-term goals for the Internet of Things. But the challenges to realizing this vision are formidable. For example, IoT battery-powered devices lack both processing power to analyze the data they receive and a power source that would support data processing.

To break through these barriers, De Salvo called for a “holistic research approach to the development of low-power architectures inspired by the human brain, where process development and integration, circuit design, system architecture and learning algorithms are simultaneously optimized.” She envisions a future in which optimized neuromorphic hardware will be implemented as a highly promising solution for future ultralow-power cognitive systems that extend well beyond the IoT.

“Emerging technologies such as advanced CMOS, 3D technologies, emerging resistive memories, and silicon photonics, coupled with novel brain-inspired paradigms, such as spike-coding and spike-time-dependent-plasticity, have extraordinary potential to provide intelligent features in hardware, approaching the way knowledge is created and processed in the human brain,” she said.

De Salvo’s presentation, “Brain-Inspired Technologies: Towards Chips that Think”, included summaries of key research findings in a variety of fields that will play a role in developing brain-inspired technologies for computing and data-handling requirements of a “hyperconnected” world.

SEMI today announced the appointment of Frank A. Shemansky, Jr., Ph.D., as executive director and chief technology officer (CTO) of the MEMS & Sensors Industry Group (SEMI-MSIG). Shemansky brings to the leadership post more than 25 years of experience in the microelectronics industry including a strong background in research and development (R&D), manufacturing, product development and technology strategy. He will direct SEMI-MSIG’s global activities, including standards, technical programs and conferences, while strengthening and expanding SEMI’s benefits to the MEMS and sensors community.

“Dr. Shemansky’s deep industry experience makes him an outstanding choice to lead and build on the success of SEMI-MSIG, a vital SEMI community,” said Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI. “We look forward to Frank drawing on his technology thought-leadership and business development acumen to bring members together to connect, collaborate and innovate with SEMI in order to help grow the MEMS and sensors markets.”

“Frank Shemansky is a strong leader and respected technologist,” said Dave Kirsch, VP/GM of EV Group North America and chair of the SEMI-MSIG Governing Council. “As SEMI-MSIG’s CTO and interim executive director, Frank has been charting our strategic course. Governing Council members are eager to tap Frank’s excellent leadership skills to take SEMI-MSIG to its next level.”

Starting his career at Motorola in semiconductor research and development, Shemansky was part of the team that brought the first commercially available MEMS transducers to market.  Shemansky has also held various management and executive level positions at companies within the MEMs and sensors industry, including Akustica, Lumedyne Technologies, Sensor Platforms, and QuickLogic. He holds seven patents, is a published author in journals ranging from Sensors and Actuators to Microsystem Technologies, and co-authored the first MEMS textbook, Sensor Technology and Devices.

With a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University, Shemansky also holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Arizona State University. He is a recipient of the Motorola Silver Quill Award, the Motorola Scientific and Technical Society Award, and the ASU Graduate Student Research Award.

“I’m very excited to lead SEMI-MSIG,” Shemansky said. “SEMI-MSIG members are enabling and transforming everything from autonomous vehicles to healthcare to drones. SEMI provides a wealth of industry services and global connections that can increasingly facilitate the growth and prosperity of SEMI-MSIG member companies. I look forward to working with our members to bring new value to our industry.”