2005 Purdue–Silicon Valley Symposia
Nano-Structured Si and SiGe vs. Faster Materials: A Fork in the Roadmap?
The end of the roadmap is rapidly approaching for Si and SiGe chip technology. But as history has shown, we can never count out this technology. However, both the required exotic device structure and nano lithography and processing might present challenges for producing economically viable Si-based chips at the 22 nm scale. Therefore, now might be the ideal time to consider small band-gap compound semiconductors as an alternative route beyond the next two generations of Si-based technologies.
InAs is such an alternative with its high low-field mobility and high-saturation drift velocity compared to Si. This presentation will present a critical assessment of this alternative, showing that cutoff frequencies approaching 1 terahertz are possible using 100 nm ground rules for MOSFETs and 500 nm ground rules for HBTs.
Jerry Woodall
Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of both the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship and Discovery Park Corporate Relations, Purdue University
Jerry Woodall, National Medal of Technology (NMT) laureate, earned his PhD in electrical engineering from Cornell University and his BS in metallurgy from MIT. He serves as chief scientist of LightSpin Technologies, Inc.
Woodalls NMT citation attributes fully half of the worlds annual sales of compound semiconductor components to his research legacy. He created the first high-purity bulk crystals of GaAs, the first practical compound semiconductor heterojunction, GaAs/AlGaAs (making cw lasers possible), and pioneered its derivatives—e.g. high-efficiency red LEDs, the superluminescent infrared LED, the heterojunction bipolar transistor and pseudomorphic high-electron mobility transistor (HBT and p-HEMT, used in RF and microwave circuits), the weight-efficient solar cell, and low-temperature MBE growth.
A member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), Professor Woodall is also a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), the Institute of Electrical and Computer Engineers (IEEE), the Electrochemical Society (ECS), and the AVS Science and Technology Society, plus past ECS and AVS president. He has published 334 publications in open literature and been issued 67 U.S. patents. His awards include the IEEE Jack Morton Award, the ECS Solid State Science and Technology Award, the ECS Founders Award, an IR 100 Award, a Heinrich Welker Gold Medal, the AVS Founders Award, and an IEEE Third Millennium Award.