Micron, Washington university open silicon materials testing lab

By Ann Steffora Mutschler -- Electronic News, 3/20/2007

To research new combinations of materials for use in semiconductor manufacturing, memory giant Micron Inc. has helped launch a new lab at the University of Washington, which opened Monday.

Micron reminded that the industry is facing the predicament: as chips get smaller, they are reaching a physical limit with nano-scale effects changing material behavior.

Fumio Ohuchi, a professor in the department of materials science and engineering and director of the new Micron Laboratory at the Seattle-based university explained that silicon is still a good material for the active area of a chip, where the electrons travel, but the supporting material will have to change as the technical limit is pushed. “Smaller devices will require new combinations of materials,” he noted.

The first goal for the University of Washington’s Micron Laboratory for Combinatorial Materials Exploration is to finding these new combinations of materials.

Boise-based Micron and its Micron Foundation said it provided the lab with more than $400,000 in equipment and $500,000 in cash, in order to allow collaborative research leading to faster, more efficient and cost-effective screening of new materials.

Scott DeBoer, Micron's director of process development said in a statement, “In order to compete in the fast-paced micro-electronics industry, Micron must continue to innovate and execute on the cutting-edge, material science technologies of tomorrow. By collaborating with the UW on combinatorial materials, we have a unique opportunity to enhance advanced research activities and findings that continue to drive material development efforts and digital technology innovation.”

Ohuchi also reminded that today’s silicon-based transistors, used in all computer processors and memory chips are predicted to be obsolete by 2025.

New materials will be required to combine optical and magnetic signals – two directions for future microchips – with existing silicon electronics. At the moment, many possible successors are vying for favor. Testing them all quickly is beyond the ability of conventional materials testing, he added.

To do this the Micron Lab’s machines automate materials testing by creating a wafer, called a materials library, whose properties change gradually. By layering these wafers, a single test can evaluate all possible combinations of important factors -- such as manufacturing process, material composition and atomic structure -- to see which produce the best attributes. The word "combinatorial" in the lab's name refers to this system for combining different materials.

Similar techniques for screening candidates have long been used in the pharmaceutical industry, but are only beginning to be used in materials research, Ohuchi said.

The new lab will work cooperatively with other institutions using combinatorial materials testing, including the National Institute of Materials Science in Japan, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., and the University of Maryland in College Park.

Materials scientists predict that the abundance of data generated by this type of screening will have the same effect on their field that the Human Genome Project had on biology.

The lab will be directed by a multidisciplinary team of five UW faculty, led by Ohuchi. As well, physicist Marjorie Olmstead will help assess why materials respond in certain ways; materials scientist Raj Bordia will study whether combinations are compatible and stable; electrical engineers Bruce Darling and Scott Dunham will conduct modeling experiments and build prototype devices.

The fast pace of today's computer industry means research once carried out in many steps, Ohuchi said, is now being done simultaneously.

All results will be collected in a publicly-accessible computer database, and while the initial motivation for the lab is to test semiconductors for the computer industry, over time it may be used to test new materials for energy and environmental uses, such as components for solar cells and fuel cells, or to discover replacements for dwindling resources, such as the indium used in flat-panel display screens, Ohuchi predicts.

“We want to have a global impact. Together we hope to become a nucleus for research and also education, preparing students for the workforce of tomorrow,” he concluded.