IUCRC Planning Grant University of Illinois: Center for Aggressive Scaling by Advanced Processes for Electronics and Photonics (ASAP)

The Center for Aggressive Scaling by Advanced Processes for Electronics and Photonics (ASAP) will develop new materials and process paradigms for efficient electrical interconnects, which are the foundations for next-generation computing systems at advanced technology nodes. Semiconductor companies and integrated circuits vendors are seeking new materials to improve computer speeds and processing abilities.

Additionally, in big data applications, it is the data transport via interconnects between memory and compute nodes that limits the overall system performance. To tackle these urgent needs of the microelectronics industry, ASAP will establish a materials-to-system codesign research framework guided by industry leaders and experts from materials science, nanofabrication, electronic and photonic device physics, and circuit design.

The Center's research will help enable the US semiconductor industry to maintain their technological leadership in advanced manufacturing. ASAP will strive to have a sustained and meaningful impact on the next-generation computing infrastructure by partnering with industry leaders. The Center will add strength to areas of national security, healthcare, food security, and transportation where electronics are a key aspect of the supply chain.

By engaging with companies of all sizes, the Center fosters opportunities for future workforce training not only in technical competence, but also in leadership and entrepreneurship. The Center will also engage its own institutional infrastructure and industry foundations to support ASAP's diversity and inclusivity goals. These include: a Women in Microelectronics mentoring program for undergraduate and graduate students to reimagine the future workforce in microelectronics, a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program, and a Saturday Engineering for Everyone forum.

Currently, the semiconductor industry is faced with new challenges: (i) Finding novel conducting and dielectric materials for ultra-thin interconnects that have high thermal, electrical, and mechanical reliability and possess higher current carrying capability along with a higher barrier to electromigration at the nanoscale; (ii) Finding new non-volatile complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible memory technologies to bring memory closer to the compute nodes; and (iii) Identifying new connectivity technology at the macroscale to overcome the spectrum scarcity and bandwidth limitations of the radiofrequency (RF) band as more than 80 billion devices are envisaged to be connected to the internet by 2024. The overall objective of the ASAP Center is to create the knowledge to drive fundamental technology solutions, from materials to devices and architectures, toward addressing the needs of semiconductor industry related to interconnect and memory bottlenecks of next-generation computing platforms.

The scope of ASAP research comprises: (i) multiphysics modeling of inverse material design and reliability-aware materials process development for improved interconnect conductors and inter-wire dielectrics; (ii) scalable integration of III-V and III-N devices on silicon for optical and terahertz interconnects; (iii) development of non-volatile spintronics memory for in-memory computing. The tightly coupled experimental-theoretical approach to materials design, the cross-disciplinary expertise of team members, and experimental capabilities are required to tackle challenging scientific and industry-relevant problems.

ASAP will strive to advance the new frontier of low temperature, ultra-high aspect ratio, in situ and 3D monitoring, and self-assembled monolithic approaches. The risk and reliability assessment will be carried out to evaluate and predict material and structure degradation, along with circuit- and system-level performance benchmarking.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.