For the past 20 years, doomsayers have been talking about the end of performance increase in computing because transistor scaling was supposed to end. We all know this was far from true and continued physical and performance scaling of transistors has enabled huge leaps in computing power. Maintaining physical or performance scaling of the switches themselves is becoming more difficult and alternative channel materials are starting to look very promising for replacing Si. Certain oxides and 2D or 1D semiconductors are prime candidates to enable continued performance and/or area scaling while maintaining the computing paradigm. Beyond these simple switches, performance gains at function level could come from implementing more complex devices such as majority gates. Beyond functional scaling, paradigm changes such as quantum computing could provide continued increase of computing power. In this presentation, we will touch on few key topics for several of the devices that enable this continued performance gains. We will outline what we believe to be important aspects to innovate on.
Transistors with 2D materials hold the promise for extreme gate length scaling compared to Si as they can be deposited with monolayer precision, and mobility is expected to be almost independent of material thickness. In this presentation, we will discuss imec's work on 2D materials going from certain materials and process steps, through device fabrication and modelling of transistors with 2D materials. We will briefly cover device architecture for high performance applications and implications for device integration. We will emphasize how variability analysis can help differentiate between one-off observations and consistent process control and understanding.
Quantum computing is fundamentally different that classical computing but many of the technology challenges are similar to those for building classical systems. In this talk, we will outline how learning and practices from standard semiconductor development can be used to enable quantum computing. We will discuss how materials and process development can improve device performance. We explain how standard modelling can be extended to describe qubits. And we will describe imec's latest work on qubits.
The EST Seminar series hosted by the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford is designed to explore and disseminate research and developments on electronic systems. This includes advances in materials science, device physics, device technologies, as well as circuits and architectures that could impact future electronic systems.The application space spans the gamut of computing, memory, communication, energy harvesting and storage, power devices, sensors and sensor systems. Distinguished speakers from both industry and academia are invited to present their most recent research in these respective fields.