Tag Archives: letter-pulse-tech

Plessey, a developer of award-winning optoelectronic technology solutions, announces a collaboration with EV Group (EVG), a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment for the MEMS, nanotechnology and semiconductor markets, to bring high-performance GaN-on-Silicon (GaN-on-Si) monolithic microLED technology to the mass market. microLEDs are the key optical technology for next-generation AR applications.

Plessey has purchased a GEMINI® production wafer bonding system from EVG to enable bonding and alignment at Plessey’s fabrication facility in Plymouth, UK. This enables Plessey to bond its GaN-on-Si microLED arrays to the panel’s backplane at a wafer level, and with the high level of alignment precision necessary to enable very small pixel dimensions.

EVG’s patented SmartView®NT Automated Bond Alignment System technology is suitable for Plessey’s requirements because it allows face-to-face alignment of the wafers with very high precision. A maximum level of automation and process integration is achieved by the GEMINI Automated Production Wafer Bonding System. Wafer-to-wafer alignment and wafer bonding processes up to 300mm for volume manufacturing are all performed in one fully automated platform.

John Whiteman, VP of Engineering at Plessey, explained: ‘The modular design of the GEMINI system is ideal for our requirements. Having the pre-treatment, clean, alignment and bonding enabled within one system means higher yield and throughput in production. The excellent service provided by EVG has been critical to bringing the system online quickly and efficiently.’

Paul Lindner, executive technology director at EV Group, commented: ‘We are honoured that Plessey selected our state-of-the-art GEMINI system to support their ambitious technology development roadmaps and high-volume production plans.’

This announcement marks another key milestone for Plessey in investment in production-grade equipment to bring GaN-on-Si based monolithic microLED products to market.

In optics, the era of glass lenses may be waning.

In recent years, physicists and engineers have been designing, constructing and testing different types of ultrathin materials that could replace the thick glass lenses used today in cameras and imaging systems. Critically, these engineered lenses — known as metalenses — are not made of glass. Instead, they consist of materials constructed at the nanoscale into arrays of columns or fin-like structures. These formations can interact with incoming light, directing it toward a single focal point for imaging purposes.

But even though metalenses are much thinner than glass lenses, they still rely on “high aspect ratio” structures, in which the column or fin-like structures are much taller than they are wide, making them prone to collapsing and falling over. Furthermore, these structures have always been near the wavelength of light they’re interacting with in thickness — until now.

Four ultrathin metalenses developed by University of Washington researchers and visualized under a microscope. Credit: Liu et al., Nano Letters, 2018

In a paper published Oct. 8 in the journal Nano Letters, a team from the University of Washington and the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan announced that it has constructed functional metalenses that are one-tenth to one-half the thickness of the wavelengths of light that they focus. Their metalenses, which were constructed out of layered 2D materials, were as thin as 190 nanometers — less than 1/100,000ths of an inch thick.

“This is the first time that someone has shown that it is possible to create a metalens out of 2D materials,” said senior and co-corresponding author Arka Majumdar, a UW assistant professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering.

Their design principles can be used for the creation of metalenses with more complex, tunable features, added Majumdar, who is also a faculty researcher with the UW’s Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute.

Majumdar’s team has been studying the design principles of metalenses for years, and previously constructed metalenses for full-color imaging. But the challenge in this project was to overcome an inherent design limitation in metalenses: in order for a metalens material to interact with light and achieve optimal imaging quality, the material had to be roughly the same thickness as the light’s wavelength in that material. In mathematical terms, this restriction ensures that a full zero to two-pi phase shift range is achievable, which guarantees that any optical element can be designed. For example, a metalens for a 500-nanometer lightwave — which in the visual spectrum is green light — would need to be about 500 nanometers in thickness, though this thickness can decrease as the refractive index of the material increases.

Majumdar and his team were able to synthesize functional metalenses that were much thinner than this theoretical limit — one-tenth to one-half the wavelength. First, they constructed the metalens out of sheets of layered 2D materials. The team used widely studied 2D materials such as hexagonal boron nitride and molybdenum disulfide. A single atomic layer of these materials provides a very small phase shift, unsuitable for efficient lensing. So the team used multiple layers to increase the thickness, although the thickness remained too small to reach a full two-pi phase shift.

“We had to start by figuring out what type of design would yield the best performance given the incomplete phase,” said co-author Jiajiu Zheng, a doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering.

To make up for the shortfall, the team employed mathematical models that were originally formulated for liquid-crystal optics. These, in conjunction with the metalens structural elements, allowed the researchers to achieve high efficiency even if the whole phase shift is not covered. They tested the metalens’ efficacy by using it to capture different test images, including of the Mona Lisa and a block letter W. The team also demonstrated how stretching the metalens could tune the focal length of the lens.

In addition to achieving a wholly new approach to metalens design at record-thin levels, the team believes that its experiments show the promise of making new devices for imaging and optics entirely out of 2D materials.

“These results open up an entirely new platform for studying the properties of 2D materials, as well as constructing fully functional nanophotonic devices made entirely from these materials,” said Majumdar.

Additionally, these materials can be easily transferred on any substrate, including flexible materials, paving a way towards flexible photonics.

MIRPHAB, a European Commission project to create a pilot line to fabricate mid-infrared (MIR) sensors by 2020, is accepting proposals from companies that want to develop and prototype new MIR devices that operate in gas-and-liquid media.

The project produces MIR photonic devices via assembled and/or packaged devices for laser-based, analytical MIR sensors, and expert design for sensor components that are fabricated on the pilot line. The platform is organized so that development of novel sensors and sensing systems is based on MIR integrated optic components and modules already incorporated in MIRPHAB’s portfolio.

The aim of the MIRPHAB pilot line is to provide each customer with a unique chemical spectroscopic system by combining sources, photonic circuits and detectors in standard packaging.

“European industry requires more efficient control processes to gain greater productivity and operational efficiency, and this project will deliver the devices required to improve those processes,” said CEA-Leti’s Sergio Nicoletti, who is coordinating the project. “MIRPHAB also will develop new sensor technology that provides novel analytical tools for companies to help improve people’s overall quality of life via environmental monitoring (e.g to measure VOC), food quality control (e.g. food spoilage or  adulteration ) and fast clinical diagnoses (e.g. provide cancer cells images). These are some of the areas where MIR sensors will play an increasingly significant role.”

In addition to providing device-design services for customers, the MIRPHAB team will help them develop sound business cases and strong business plans to commercialize their new devices. Potential cost-and-performance breakthroughs will be shown for reliable MIR sensing products based on building blocks provided by MIRPHAB. MIRPHAB also will be a sustainable source of key components for new and highly competitive MIR sensors, and will support their successful market introduction, while strengthening the competitiveness of European industry.

Mid-infrared light interacts strongly with molecular vibrations as each molecule gives a unique absorption spectrum that provides a simple solution for sensing. The sensors’ reduced size and flexible design make them ideal candidates for integration into already existing equipment for in-line/on-line detection.

The MIRPHAB team will host a booth, #ZB24, at the Sensors USA event in Santa Clara, Calif., Nov. 14-15, 2018.

MIRPHAB is funded by the Photonics Public Private Partnership. The project brings together 18 leading European organizations and is coordinated by CEA-Leti. For more information visit the project’s website.

Scientists at Nagoya Institute of Technology (NITech) and collaborating universities in Japan have gained new insights into the mechanisms behind degradation of a semiconductor material that is used in electronic devices. By highlighting the specific science behind how the material degrades, they are making way for potential discoveries that may prevent the performance degradation of the material.

The study was published in the Journal of Applied Physics in September of 2018. The scientists used Silicon Carbide (SiC) material for the experiment. SiC is becoming a more popular alternative to standard semiconductor materials for electronic devices. The study is based on a specific type of SiC material that is characteristic for its structure, or 4H-SiC. This material was exposed to both photoluminescence as well as various temperatures as a means to create specific kinds of deformations that lead to the degradation of SiC-based devices. The scientists were able to observe how these deformations actually take place on an atomic level.

“We quantified the speed at which electric charge particles move in regions of 4H-SiC material where the atomic structure has been defected. This will usher discoveries of ways to suppress degradation of SiC-based devices such as power electronic systems,” states Dr. Masashi Kato, an associate professor at the Frontier Research Institute for Materials Science in NITech.

In order to better understand the actual mechanism behind atomic deformation that lead to degradations, the researchers used photoluminescence to induce movement of electric charge particles and measured the speeds at which that took place. They looked for specific factors that may limit particle movement, including the material that was used.

They also tested the effects of increasing temperature, specifically looking to see if higher temperatures will increase or decrease rate of deformation.

According to Dr. Kato, the presence of a particular kind of atomic deformation that causes the material degrade is particularly problematic for SiC-based power devices. “While a particular SiC-based device is in operation, the atoms of the material deform, which leads to degradation. The process by which these atoms deform is not clear yet. What is known, however, is that movement of electric charge within the material as well as areas where the material has become defect already contribute to the aforementioned atomic deformation,” he states.

So far similar experiments have been conducted in the past by other researchers, the results that have been reported are not consistent. Here, the result of experiments with photoluminescence indicates that the carrier recombination in single Shockley stacking faults (1SSFs) and at partial dislocations (PDs) is faster than that in regions without 1SSFs in 4H-SiC. Such fast recombination will induce the degradation of the device with 1SSFs. In addition, 1SSF expansion velocity also increases with temperature increase.

As such, they pave the way for research that will revolve around the slowing of SiC-based devices degradation. This, in turn, could potentially result in higher quality and more durable devices.

Along those lines, the authors state that their future research endeavors will focus on finding out ways to prevent SiC-based devices from degrading as well as creating devices that will not wear down over time.

Exagan, an innovator of gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductor technology enabling smaller and more efficient electrical converters, is extending its market reach by introducing new G-FET™ power transistors and G-DRIVE™ intelligent, fast-switching devices with enhanced power capabilities for automotive and server applications. With the products’ drain-source on resistance (RDSon) capabilities ranging from 30 milliohms to 65 milliohms, these new releases provide enhanced performance and power efficiency for diverse applications including electric vehicles (EV), industrial equipment and data servers.

At this week’s Electronica trade show in Munich, Exagan is demonstrating the implementation of its products for kilowatt-range applications using topologies such as totem-pole PFC to achieve high conversion efficiency as well as improved power density.

Power supplies for the fast-growing server market are one of the first power applications to benefit from Exagan’s GaN solutions. Global servershipments increased 20.7 percent year over year to 2.7 million units in the first quarter of 2018, according to the research firm International Data Corporation.

Another sector to benefit from these enhanced products is automotive power electronics, where Exagan’s solutions provide robust performance and simplify design-in at the system level. During the Automotive Conference at Electronica, Exagan’s President and CEO Frédéric Dupont is giving a presentation entitled “From Evolution to Revolution: Disrupting Automotive Power Conversion with GaN” that explains how small, lightweight and highly cost-effective power solutions made with GaN can be applied in EVs.

“Our G-FET and G-DRIVE product lines offer the most comprehensive portfolio of easily integrated GaN solutions for an extensive range of applications spanning consumer, server and automotive markets,” said Exagan’s chief executive Dupont. “To work closely with our customers, we recently opened application centers in France and Taiwan focused on delivering the most competitive GaN-based solutions for current and emerging power-conversion needs.”

The new GaN product solutions announced today prove Exagan’s ability to provide multiple products using an established 200-mm CMOS manufacturing process while maintaining full control of Exagan’s proprietary GaN technology. Engineering samples of Exagan’s newest GaN solutions with associated evaluation boards are available.

Micron Technology, Inc., (Nasdaq: MU) today announced that its GDDR6 memory, Micron’s fastest and most powerful graphics memory, will be the high-performance memory of choice supporting Achronix’s next-generation stand-alone FPGA products built on TSMC 7nm process technology. GDDR6 is optimized for a variety of demanding applications, including machine learning, that require multi-terabit memory bandwidth and will enable Achronix to offer FPGAs at less than half the cost of FPGAs with comparable memory solutions.

Achronix’s high-performance FPGAs, combined with GDDR6 memory, are the industry’s highest-bandwidth memory solution for accelerating machine learning workloads in data center and automotive applications.

This new joint solution addresses many of the inherent challenges in deep neural networks, including storing large data sets, weight parameters and activations in memory. The underlying hardware needs to store, process and rapidly move data between the processor and memory. In addition, it needs to be programmable to allow more efficient implementations for constantly changing machine learning algorithms. Achronix’s next-generation FPGAs have been optimized to process machine learning workloads and currently are the only FPGAs that offer support for GDDR6 memory.

“From GPUs and beyond, Micron delivers high-performance memory solutions that meet the needs of today’s most demanding applications, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning — most recently demonstrated by achieving throughput of up to 16 Gb/s on our GDDR6 solutions,” said Andreas Schlapka, director of Micron’s networking segment. “In addition to offering increased performance, Micron has developed an ecosystem to support companies like Achronix whose FPGAs with GDDR6 will enable rapid creation of designs. This, in effect, translates into faster time to market for customers using this powerful new memory technology.”

Achronix’s next-generation FPGAs include up to eight hardened GDDR6 memory interfaces that provide customers the flexibility to choose from multiple memory configurations for their end application. Customers can use from one to eight GDDR6 memory devices, which can offer over 4 Tb/s memory bandwidth and from 8Gb to 128Gb density. This type of flexibility allows customers to optimize cost and power for their application, which is not currently possible with alternate high-bandwidth memory solutions like HBM2.

“With more than 14 years’ experience in developing high-performance FPGAs, Achronix is the first FPGA company to support GDDR6 memory and deliver multi-terabit memory bandwidth at the lowest cost for data center, blockchain, networking and automotive applications that require the highest-performance programmable platform,” said Manoj Roge, vice president of strategic planning and business development at Achronix Semiconductor Corporation. “Achronix is excited to work closely with Micron and other ecosystem partners to accelerate time to market for GDDR6-based solutions for our customers’ most demanding workloads and applications.”

Micron works closely with partners like Achronix to accelerate engineering efforts to build robust models and toolsets and deliver board layout validation. Through this ecosystem approach, Micron delivers high-bandwidth memory technology that provides a path for engineers to incorporate GDDR6 in designs and bring bandwidth-intensive applications to market.

EV Group (EVG), a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment for the MEMS, nanotechnology and semiconductor markets, today announced that IHP – Innovations for High Performance Microelectronics (IHP), a German research institute for silicon-based systems, highest-frequency integrated circuits, and technologies for wireless and broadband communication, has purchased an EVG® ComBond® automated high-vacuum wafer bonding system for use in developing next-generation wireless and broadband communication devices.

The EVG ComBond features micron-level wafer-to-wafer alignment accuracy and room-temperature covalent bonding, which enables a wide variety of substrate and interconnect combinations for producing advanced engineered substrates, next-generation MEMS and power devices, stacked solar cells, and high-performance logic and “beyond CMOS” devices. The ability to conduct oxide-free aluminum-to-aluminum (Al-Al) direct bonding at low temperature is a unique capability of the EVG ComBond platform, and is among the new bonding applications that IHP will explore with the system.

The EVG ComBond® features micron-level wafer-to-wafer alignment accuracy and room-temperature covalent bonding, which enables a wide variety of substrate and interconnect combinations.

Covalent bonding enables wafer-level packaging and heterogeneous integration

Heterogeneous integration through wafer-level-packaging (WLP) — where multiple semiconductor components with different design nodes, sizes or materials are combined into a single package at the wafer level — is key to extending the semiconductor technology roadmap. Metal and hybrid wafer bonding are key process technologies for WLP and heterogeneous integration due to their ability to enable ultra-fine pitch interconnections between the stacked devices or components. The continuous drive to higher performance and functionality of these integrated systems requires constant reductions in the dimensions and pitch of the interconnects — which in turn drives the need for tighter wafer bond alignment accuracy.

In addition, for certain WLP applications, Al-Al direct bonding is a promising new method of metal-based bonding due to aluminum’s low cost coupled with its high thermal and electrical conductivities. However, conventional Al-Al thermo-compression bonding requires high temperatures and bond forces to provide reliable bonding interfaces — making it incompatible with heterogeneous integration efforts.

According to Paul Lindner, executive technology director at EV Group, “Combining different materials and device components into a single package has taken on greater importance in adding performance and value to electronic devices. The EVG ComBond facilitates the bonding of nearly ‘anything on anything’ in wafer form. This provides our customers with a powerful solution for researching new material combinations for future semiconductor devices. Its micron-level alignment capability also makes the EVG ComBond uniquely suited for use in high-volume manufacturing of emerging heterogeneous integration device designs.”

EVG’s breakthrough ComBond wafer activation technology and high-vacuum handling and processing allow the formation of covalent bonds at room or low temperature for fabricating engineered substrates and device structures. The EVG ComBond facilitates the bonding of heterogeneous materials with different lattice constants and coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) as well as the formation of electrically conductive bond interfaces through a unique oxide-removal process. The EVG ComBond maintains a high-vacuum and oxide-free environment throughout the entire bonding process, enabling low-temperature bonding of metals, such as aluminum, that re-oxidize quickly in ambient environments. Void-free and particle-free bond interfaces and excellent bond strength can be achieved for all material combinations.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES and indie Semiconductor today announced the release of a new generation of customized microcontrollers on GF’s 55nm Low Power Extended (55LPx) automotive-qualified platform, which includes embedded non-volatile memory (SuperFlash®) technology. indie Semiconductor’s new Nigel products are based on ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller cores, capable of supporting advanced functionalities in IoT, medical and automotive markets. indie Semi is already shipping products, manufactured on GF’s 55LPx process, to automotive customers in volume.

indie’s custom microcontrollers integrate in a single device mixed-signal functionality for sensing, processing, controlling and communicating. GF’s 55LPx platform, with SST’s SuperFlash® memory technology, enables the use of high-density memory and high-performance processing combined with mixed-signal functions in indie’s Nigel M4 controllers, delivering a highly integrated automotive solution at 55nm node.

“indie’s Nigel controller is designed to support high performance computing for automotive system architectures,” said Paul Hollingworth, executive vice president of sales and marketing at indie Semiconductor. “As automotive system requirements get more complex, our customers need solutions to perform complex processing while combining multiple functions into a single chip to minimize size and weight. We chose GF’s automotive-qualified 55LPx platform for its combination of density, performance and cost.”

“GF is pleased to be working with indie Semiconductor, a leader in state-of-the-art SoC technology,” said Rajesh Nair, vice president of mainstream offering management at GF. “indie Semiconductor joins our rapidly growing client base for GF’s 55LPx platform, which offers a combination of superior low-power logic, embedded non-volatile memory, extensive IP, and superior reliability for consumer, industrial and automotive grade 1 applications.”

The 55LPx RF-enabled platform provides a fast path-to-product solution that includes silicon-qualified RF IP and Silicon Storage Technology’s (SST) highly reliable embedded SuperFlash® memory. The platform is in volume production on GF’s 300mm line in Singapore. In addition to Nigel, indie Semiconductor is currently developing several products on the technology, many of which are for automotive applications.

Process design kits and an extensive offering of silicon proven IP are available now. For more information on GF’s mainstream CMOS solutions, contact your GF sales representative or go to globalfoundries.com.

By using an x-ray technique available at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), scientists found that the metal-insulator transition in the correlated material magnetite is a two-step process. The researchers from the University of California Davis published their paper in the journal Physical Review Letters. NSLS-II, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility located at Brookhaven National Laboratory, has unique features that allow the technique to be applied with stability and control over long periods of time.

“Correlated materials have interesting electronic, magnetic, and structural properties, and we try to understand how those properties change when their temperature is changed or under the application of light pulses, or an electric field” said Roopali Kukreja, a UC Davis professor and the lead author of the paper. One such property is electrical conductivity, which determines whether a material is metallic or an insulator.

If a material is a good conductor of electricity, it is usually metallic, and if it is not, it is then known as an insulator. In the case of magnetite, temperature can change whether the material is a conductor or insulator. For the published study, the researchers’ goal was to see how the magnetite changed from insulator to metallic at the atomic level as it got hotter.

In any material, there is a specific arrangement of electrons within each of its billions of atoms. This ordering of electrons is important because it dictates a material’s properties, for example its conductivity. To understand the metal-insulator transition of magnetite, the researchers needed a way to watch how the arrangement of the electrons in the material changed with the alteration of temperature.

“This electronic arrangement is related to why we believe magnetite becomes an insulator,” said Kukreja. However, studying this arrangement and how it changes under different conditions required the scientists to be able to look at the magnetite at a super-tiny scale.

The technique, known as x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS), available at NSLS-II’s Coherent Soft X-ray scattering (CSX) beamline, allowed the researchers to look at how the material changed at the nanoscale–on the order of billionths of a meter.

“CSX is designed for soft x-ray coherent scattering. This means that the beamline exploits our ultrabright, stable and coherent source of x-rays to analyze how the electron’s arrangement changes over time,” explained Andi Barbour, a CSX scientist who is a coauthor on the paper. “The excellent stability allows researchers to investigate tiny variations over hours so that the intrinsic electron behavior in materials can be revealed.”

However, this is not directly visible so XPCS uses a trick to reveal the information.

“The XPCS technique is a coherent scattering method capable of probing dynamics in a condensed matter system. A speckle pattern is generated when a coherent x-ray beam is scattered from a sample, as a fingerprint of its inhomogeneity in real space,” said Wen Hu, a scientist at CSX and co-author of the paper.

Scientists can then apply different conditions to their material and if the speckle pattern changes, it means the electron ordering in the sample is changing. “Essentially, XPCS measures how much time it takes for a speckle’s intensity to become very different from the average intensity, which is known as decorrelation,” said Claudio Mazzoli, the lead beamline scientist at the CSX beamline. “Considering many speckles at once, the ensemble decorrelation time is the signature of the dynamic timescale for a given sample condition.”

The technique revealed that the metal-insulator transition is not a one step process, as was previously thought, but actually happens in two steps.

“What we expected was that things would go faster and faster while warming up. What we saw was that things get faster and faster and then they slow down. So the fast phase is one step and the second step is the slowing down, and that needs to happen before the material becomes metallic,” said Kukreja. The scientists suspect that the slowing down occurs because, during the phase change, the metallic and insulating properties actually exist at the same time in the material.

“This study shows that these nanometer length scales are really important for these materials,” said Kukreja. “We can’t access this information and these experimental parameters anywhere else than at the CSX beamline of NSLS-II.”

MRSI Systems (Mycronic Group) announces new demonstration capability at its sister company, Shenzhen Axxon Automation (Mycronic Group) facility in the Longhua district, Shenzhen, China. MRSI will be offering local demonstrations of its market leading MRSI-HVM3 die bonder and also die bonding applications using customer’s sample materials, by arrangement.

This offers existing and prospective customers in China the opportunity to review the detailed performance capability of the MRSI-HVM3 in a local setting, supported by MRSI’s world-class local application engineers for a quick turn-around of product demonstration and die bonding sample building. The MRSI-HVM3 product family delivers industry-leading speed, future-proof high precision (< 3 micrometers), and superior flexibility for true multi-process, multi-chip, high-volume production. The superior performance is enabled by dual head, dual stage, integrated “on-the-fly” tool changer, ultrafast eutectic stage, and multi-levels of parallel processing optimizations.

The MRSI-HVM3 is designed for specific applications including Chip-on-Carrier (CoC), Chip-on-Submount (CoS), and Chip-on-Baseplate (CoB) assembly using eutectic and/or epoxy stamping die bonding. This also provides great opportunities to discuss with MRSI’s local process experts for solutions within the extended product configurations of HVM3e, HVM3P, H3TO, and H3LD. These configurations are based upon the same design as HVM3 but configured specifically for local top heating, inline conveyor CoB, AOC and gold-box packaging, WDM & EML TO-can packaging and high power laser diode packaging, respectively.

MRSI Systems Launches MRSI-HVM3P for New Applications

MRSI-H3TO Die Bonding Product Family Targeted at the 5G Wireless Network Supply Chain

MRSI-H3LD Die Bonder Targeted at the High Power Diode Laser Market