Product category:
Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and DSPs
News Release from: Freescale Semiconductor
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 07 September 2001
Motorola cracks the GaAs on silicon
riddle
Motorola is claiming a first in combining silicon with III-V materials.
Motorola is claiming a first in combining silicon with III-V materials The discovery, which solves a problem that has been vexing the semiconductor industry for nearly 30 years, opens the door to significantly less expensive optical communications, high-frequency radio devices and high-speed microprocessor-based subsystems by potentially eliminating the current cost barriers holding back many advanced applications
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 20 Mar 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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The technology enables very thin layers of III-V semiconductor materials (including gallium arsenide, indium phosphide, gallium nitride and other high-performance and/or light-emitting compounds) to be grown on a silicon substrate.
Until now, this has been a virtually impossible task due to fundamental material mismatch issues.
Specifically, the underlying crystalline structures of silicon and the various III-V compounds do not match.
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As a result, previous industry attempts to combine them resulted in dislocations or "cracks" in the material as the two mismatched structures struggled to bond.
The key to solving the problem was introducing an intermediate layer of material between the silicon and the III-V material.
The solution was found in discovering exactly the right "recipe" for a material that would easily bond with both silicon and GaAs, reducing the strain between the two target materials in the process.
The idea was originally developed by Motorola Labs' scientist, Dr Jamal Ramdani.
Developing and proving the exact recipe and process grew out of work done by a broad team of scientists and engineers.
Motorola Labs is now working on developing the optimum intermediate layer for indium phosphide and other materials.
Motorola Labs created the world's first 8in GaAs on silicon wafer and worked with epitaxial wafer manufacturer IQE to create the world's first 12in GaAs on silicon wafer.
Motorola then made working power amplifiers from GaAs on silicon wafers and successfully completed numerous wireless calls using those devices in several phones over the past few months.
In addition, a light-emitting device was created to demonstrate the optical characteristics.
"GaAs on silicon is just the first step and has created a baseline technology for extending our research to other materials systems", said Dr Jim Prendergast, vice president and director, Motorola Labs, Physical Sciences Research Lab.
"One of our next goals is to complete the task of growing indium phosphide on silicon.
This technology should support chip clock speeds of more than 70GHz and long-wavelength lasers that are critical to fibre-optic communications".
Motorola has filed more than 270 patents on inventions related to this new technology and the company intends to broadly license the technology.
Padmasree Warrior, a Motorola corporate vice president has been selected to lead the commercialisation effort.
Warrior has worked in all aspects of the semiconductor segment, including device technology, research and development, process engineering, manufacturing and pilot line operations.
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