What To Do With A GaN PDK


Wolfspeed's Jeremy Fisher provides a hands on demo of how his group achieved a first-pass run of a 40GHz MMIC chip using using a PDK for its 0.14 micron process. [youtube vid=i7dsQG8CTO4] » read more

Will III-V Power Devices Happen?


In a previous blog post, I provided a review of the overall power device market and trends driving changes in device evolution that entail materials innovation. For the industry to make such a shift, the advantages over mature, low-cost silicon technologies must be compelling and something the industry absolutely has to implement. Now I’d like to focus on new materials offering competitive be... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 23


Rolling Out Solar Power...Literally An International team of researchers have developed solar cells that can be added onto a roll of flexible plastic in liquid form, bringing the same kind of economies of production to the solar industry as rolls of paper and ink did for newspapers more than a century ago. Using a roll-to-roll processing method, the team was able to achieve a power conversi... » read more

5 Takeaways From Semicon


As usual, the recent Semicon West trade show was a busy, if not an overwhelming, event. The event, which took place in San Francisco in early July, featured presentations on the usual subjects in the semiconductor and IC-equipment sectors. There were sessions on 200mm, next-generation processes, transistors, lithography, MEMS and many others. In no particular order, here are my five ta... » read more

How Will 5G Work?


Sumit Tomar, general manager of the Wireless Infrastructure Products Group at RF chip giant Qorvo, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss the development of next-generation 5G wireless networks and other topics. In 2014, RF Micro Devices and TriQuint merged to form Qorvo. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: 5G, the follow-on to the current wireless standard known ... » read more

Waiting For 5G Technology


For some time, carriers, equipment OEMs and chipmakers have been gearing up for the next-generation wireless standard called 5th generation mobile networks, or 5G. 5G is the follow-on to the current wireless standard known as 4G, or long-term evolution (LTE). It will enable data transmission rates of more than 10Gbps, or 100 times the throughput of LTE. But the big question is whether 5G wil... » read more

Ray Zinn Reflects On 37 Years As CEO Of Micrel


Believed to be the longest serving CEO of any company to have existed in Silicon Valley, Ray Zinn does more in retirement than many people would accomplish as full time employees. While his name may not be at the top of most influential people in the valley, the industry may not be the same today had it not been for his contributions. Semiconductor Engineering spoke with him about his past, the... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 16


Monoxide chips Two-dimensional (2D) materials are gaining steam in the R&D labs. The 2D materials could enable a new class of field-effect transistors (FETs), but the technology isn’t expected to appear until sometime in the next decade. The 2D materials include graphene, boron nitride and the transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). One TMD, molybdenum diselenide (MoS2), is gaining inter... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 23


GaN building blocks A team of engineers from Cornell University, the University of Notre Dame, and the semiconductor company IQE created gallium nitride (GaN) power diodes capable of serving as the building blocks for future GaN power switches. In spite of having many desirable features as a material, GaN is notorious for its defects and reliability issues. So the team zeroed in on device... » read more

Manufacturing Of Next-Generation Channel Materials


One of the many challenges for the IC developers is to change the channel material to increase transistor mobility. But what about manufacturing? Can LED-style epitaxy be migrated to high-volume silicon manufacturing? “The use of Ge and InGaAs quantum wells is an extension of the current strained Si strategy," said Aaron Thean, vice president of process technologies and director of the log... » read more

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