[Editors] Beyond silicon: MIT demos new transistor technology

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
Phone: 617-253-2700
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www

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Beyond silicon:  MIT demonstrates new transistor technology
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For Immediate Release
FRIDAY, DEC. 8, 2006
Contact: Elizabeth A. Thomson, MIT News Office
Phone: 617-258-5402
Email: thomson at mit.edu

PHOTO, IMAGE AVAILABLE

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--MIT engineers have demonstrated a technology that 
could introduce an important new phase of the microelectronics 
revolution that has already brought us iPods, laptops and much more.

The work will be presented at the IEEE International Electron Devices 
Meeting Dec. 11-13 by Dae-Hyun Kim. Kim is a postdoctoral associate 
in the laboratory of Jesus del Alamo, an MIT professor of electrical 
engineering and computer science and member of MIT's Microsystems 
Technology Laboratories (MTL).

"Unless we do something very radical pretty soon, the 
microelectronics revolution that has enriched our lives in so many 
different ways might come to a screeching halt," said del Alamo.

The problem? Engineers estimate that within the next 10 to 15 years 
we will reach the limit, in terms of size and performance, of the 
silicon transistors key to the industry. "Each of us has several 
billion transistors working on our behalf every day in our phone, 
laptop, iPod, car, kitchen and more," del Alamo noted.

As a result, del Alamo's lab and others around the world are working 
on new materials and technologies that may be able to reach beyond 
the limits of silicon. "We are looking at new semiconductor materials 
for transistors that will continue to improve in performance, while 
devices get smaller and smaller," del Alamo said.

One such material del Alamo and his students at the MTL are 
investigating is a family of semiconductors known as III-V compound 
semiconductors. Unlike silicon, these are composite materials. A 
particularly hot prospect is indium gallium arsenide, or InGaAs, a 
material in which electrons travel many times faster than in silicon. 
As a result, it should be possible to make very small transistors 
that can switch and process information very quickly.

Del Alamo's group recently demonstrated this by fabricating InGaAs 
transistors that can carry 2.5 times more current than 
state-of-the-art silicon devices. More current is the key to faster 
operation. In addition, each InGaAs transistor is only 60 nanometers, 
or billionths of a meter, long. That's similar to the most advanced 
65-nanometer silicon technology available in the world today.

"The 60-nanometer InGaAs quantum-well transistor demonstrated by 
Professor del Alamo's group shows some exciting results at low supply 
voltage (e.g. 0.5V) and is a very important research milestone," said 
Robert Chau, senior fellow and director of transistor research and 
nanotechnology at Intel, a sponsor of the work.

Del Alamo notes, however, that InGaAs transistor technology is still 
in its infancy. Some of the challenges include manufacturing 
transistors in large quantities, because InGaAs is more prone to 
breakage than silicon. But del Alamo expects prototype InGaAs 
microdevices at the required dimensions to be developed over the next 
two years and the technology to take off in a decade or so.

"With more work, this semiconductor technology could greatly surpass 
silicon and allow us to continue the microelectronics revolution for 
years to come," del Alamo said.

In addition to Intel, this research is sponsored by the 
Microelectronics Advanced Research Corporation.  The MIT transistors 
were fabricated by pulling together the capabilities of three MIT 
laboratories: the Microsystems Technology Laboratories, the 
Scanning-Electron-Beam Lithography Facility and the Nanostructures 
Laboratory. Del Alamo notes that one reason for the exceptional 
performance of these transistors is the high quality of the 
semiconductor material, which was prepared by MBE Technology of 
Singapore.

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Elizabeth A. Thomson
Senior Science and Engineering Editor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
News Office, Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
617-258-5402 (ph); 617-258-8762 (fax)
<thomson at mit.edu>

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www>
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