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Katherine Derbyshire

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Katherine Derbyshire is a technical editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Driving Toward More Rugged, Less Expensive SiC
By Katherine Derbyshire - 19 May, 2022 - Comments: 0

Silicon carbide is gaining traction in the power semiconductor market, particularly in electrified vehicles, but it's still too expensive for many applications. The reasons are well understood, but until recently SiC was largely a niche technology that didn't warrant the investment. Now, as demand grows for chips that can work in high-voltage applications, SiC is getting a much closer look. ... » read more

Hiding Security Keys Using ReRAM PUFs
By Katherine Derbyshire - 21 Apr, 2022 - Comments: 2

Resistive RAM and physically unclonable functions (PUFs) have been gaining traction for completely different reasons, but when combined they create an extremely secure and inexpensive way of storing authentication keys. As security concerns shift from purely software to a combination of hardware and software, chipmakers and systems companies have been scrambling to figure out how to prevent ... » read more

GaN ICs Wanted for Power, EV Markets
By Katherine Derbyshire - 17 Mar, 2022 - Comments: 0

Circuits built with discrete GaN components may get the job done, but fully integrated GaN circuits remain the ultimate goal because they would offer many of the same advantages as integrated silicon circuits. These benefits include lower cost as the circuit footprint is scaled, and reduced parasitic resistance and capacitance with shorter interconnect runs. In addition, improved device perf... » read more

2D Semiconductors Make Progress, But Slowly
By Katherine Derbyshire - 28 Feb, 2022 - Comments: 2

Researchers are looking at a variety of new materials at future nodes, but progress remains slow. In recent years, 2D semiconductors have emerged as a leading potential solution to the problem of channel control in highly scaled transistors. As devices shrink, the channel thickness should shrink proportionally. Otherwise, the gate capacitance won’t be large enough to control the flow of cu... » read more

New Ways To Improve Batteries
By Katherine Derbyshire - 20 Jan, 2022 - Comments: 0

Researchers around the world are racing to develop more efficient, denser, and safer battery technology, and they are reaching far beyond where research has gone before. Much of this is being driven by concern over exhaust from internal combustion engines, which are responsible for a significant portion of global CO2 emissions. Nearly all carmakers today have announced plans to develop batte... » read more

Batteries Have Moving Parts
By Katherine Derbyshire - 16 Dec, 2021 - Comments: 0

The race is on to make lithium-ion batteries safer, to increase the amount of energy that can be drawn out of these devices, and to reduce the time it takes to charge them up again. Transistors and other electronic components depend on the movement of electrons, which are effectively massless and dimensionless relative to the semiconductor, metal, and dopant atoms that surround them. A batte... » read more

The Race To Make Better Qubits
By Katherine Derbyshire - 18 Nov, 2021 - Comments: 0

One of the big challenges in quantum computing is getting qubits to last long enough to do something useful with them. After decades of research, there now appears to be tangible progress. The challenge with any new semiconductor technology is to improve performance by one or more orders of magnitude without discarding a half-century of progress in other areas. Qubits based on silicon quantu... » read more

Progress On General-Purpose Quantum Computers
By Katherine Derbyshire - 21 Oct, 2021 - Comments: 0

The race is on to scale up quantum computing, transforming it from an esoteric research tool into a commercially viable, general-purpose machine. Special-purpose quantum computers have been available for several years now. Systems like D-Wave’s Advantage focus on specific classes of problems that are amenable to modeling as quantum systems. Still, the ultimate goal of having a general purp... » read more

Nudging 2D semiconductors forward
By Katherine Derbyshire - 16 Sep, 2021 - Comments: 1

The buzz about 2D materials replacing silicon appears to be premature. While 2D semiconductors have emerged as potential successors, it's not clear when or even if that will happen. As Iuliana Radu, Imec's director of quantum and exploratory computing observed, the “end” of silicon has been predicted many times before. It is not clear when 2D semiconductors will need to be ready. In fac... » read more

Stacked Nanosheets And Forksheet FETs
By Katherine Derbyshire - 19 Aug, 2021 - Comments: 0

What comes next after gate-all-around FETs is still being worked out, but it likely will involve some version of stacked nanosheets. The design of advanced transistors is a tradeoff. On one hand, it takes less gate capacitance to control a thin channel. On the other hand, thin channels can’t carry as much drive current. Stacked nanosheet designs seek to reconcile these two objectives by... » read more

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