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Shrinking Circuits
Rensselaer, a longtime leader in integrated circuit technology, is helping create the next generation of micro- and nanoelectronic devices and systems. The Center for Integrated Electronics (CIE) serves as an umbrella organization that includes five subcenters: the Center for Advanced Interconnect Sysems Technologies, the Center for Power Electronics Systems, Interconnect Focus Center-New York, the Center for Broadband Data Transport Science and Technology, and the Center for Microcontamination Control — all funded by a variety of federal, state, and industry sources.
CIE research focuses on technology that will be vital as circuits continue to shrink and grow faster. Current thrusts include pioneering research into gigascale interconnects, 3-D interconnect structures, materials properties and process modeling, wide-bandgap semiconductors and devices, terahertz devices and imaging systems, power electronics, and biochips. CIE facilities include a Class 100 Microfabrication Clean Room that supports three-, five-, and eight-inch wafer fabrication.
Michael Shur, the Patricia W. and C. Sheldon Roberts Professor of Solid State Electronics and acting director of the CIE, currently has more than 20 active grants from government and industry sources. In one program, he studies plasma waves. These oscillating electron density waves travel much faster than the electrons themselves, just as sound travels faster than air molecules, enabling the plasma waves to carry information at THz frequencies.
In another project, Shur uses terahertz radiation to image ultra-small transistors. By applying bias, researchers can study how changes are reflected in the distribution of the internal electric field with images of extremely high resolution, in the nanometer range. “This opens up potential for testing modern nanoscale integrated circuits,” says Shur. “It also can be applied to applications like creating biochip sensors for cancer detection or yeast diagnostics or the detection of biological substances.”
Toh-Ming Lu, the R. P. Baker Distinguished Professor of Physics, develops new, high-performing nanostructures and analyzes these structures as they grow. His funding comes from a variety of sources, including NSF, NIH, DOE, and New York state. He is also funded by the NSF to develop and test such nanomechanical systems as springs, rods, and beams. Potential applications include more efficient light emitters and solar cells, extremely sensitive chemical and biological sensors, and super-high-density 3-D magnetic memory. His collaborators include faculty from the departments of Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Chemistry and Chemical Biology.
Lu also develops techniques that deposit ultra-thin layers of conductive metals and dielectrics onto surfaces. One such nanoimprint material developed in his lab is for use in wafer-level packaging and imprint lithography. Polyset epoxy siloxane (PES) is a UV curable polymer that is stable at high temperatures and has low-dielectric constant and high-dielectric strength, important qualities in the drive to produce smaller, faster devices.
In work funded by the National Institutes of Health and in collaboration with researchers at the Wadsworth Center, New York state’s research-intensive public health laboratory, Lu has developed a novel microfluidic mixer that is very fast and requires very little energy input. Based on diffusion and chaotic convection, his micromixer can thoroughly mix two aqueous solutions or suspensions in less than one millisecond. This makes it highly useful for the study of macromolecular dynamics, including dynamic cellular events in biology, using electronic microscopy systems.
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