Symposium on Future Electronics

After “Stone Age” and “Iron Age”, we are currently in the “Silicon Age”. Semiconductor technology has been the foundation of electronics, as well as the major driving forces for the economic growth for last 40 years. Over the last four decades , the semiconductor industry development has been on an exponential trend, as described in Moore’s Law.

In this talk, we will go over the history of semiconductor technology, with details on how Moore’s Law describes technological change, productivity and economic growth that were enabled by the development of semiconductor technologies. After that, we will review current challenges in the semiconductor industry with such a high rate of development. More importantly, we will talk about the opportunities towards semiconductor technology advancement for the future of computing.

Sub-mm wave and Terahertz frequencies have long been attractive for imaging and communication applications. However, technological limitations have impeded the development of commercial systems at such frequencies. THz systems integration is critical for lowering the cost and enabling mass-markets. Several technologies have been proposed and are currently being investigated to address this need. In this talk, we will discuss THz generation and detection in both CMOS and III-V technologies. For THz generation, we will present an overview of existing circuit techniques and show recent measurement results of THz transmitters in 65nm CMOS and in SiGe technologies. For THz detection/reception, as the THz radiation excites the waves of the electron density (so-called plasma waves) in the transistor channels, the THz signal gets rectified due to nonlinearities associated with the electron transport. The issues with the interface between the THz detector and the preceding on-chip antenna as well as the following intermediate frequency amplifier will also be discussed and THz detection demonstrated using measurement results.