Please register in advance via Eventbrite. Attendance is free – all welcome, including Imperial alumni, school students, the general public, and staff and students of Imperial and other universities. Seminar followed by lunch.
Abstract
Microelectronics or ‘microchips’ make possible laptop computers, smart phones, and the internet which in turn revolutionise how we work, how we conduct business and shop, how we travel, how we access and receive healthcare, how we educate, how we are entertained – it is difficult to think of human activities not directly impacted by advances in electronics. These changes are underpinned by a strategy of making electrical switches smaller and smaller, leading to increasing complexity (more computing) at lower cost. An approach whereby semiconductor switches or transistors are shrunk, referred to as scaling, has been followed since the 1960’s resulting in an exponential increase in the number of transistors on a microchip due to a doubling between each new technology generation. Advances in microchip technology are now commonly described as Moore’s law which is a technical and economic observation based on the consequences of transistor scaling. Decades of scaling have resulted in transistors being manufactured today near the physical limits set by the atomic structure of materials corresponding to lengths of a few nanometre (a billionthof a metre). Dramatic changes in material properties arise at such small lengths requiring new designs and material solutions. Examples of solutions using high-k dielectrics, low-dimensional structures, quantum confinement and surface chemistry for doping & band gap engineering will be discussed. Along the way excursions are made including comments on the laws of thought, two great thinkers killed by their spouses, a few great thinkers not killed by their spouses, juggling, uni-cycling, world population, number of stars in our galaxy, smart phones, dumb phones, wires, nanowires, the year 1965, fortune telling, a chessboard, rice, alchemy, skylines, da Vinci’s Vitruvian man, the 5 senses, grapes, and grape jam.
[1] After Moore’s Law, (2016, March 12). The Economist, Technology Quarterly. https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-03-12/after-moores-law
[2] Colinge, J.-P., & Greer, J.C. (2016). Nanowire Transistors: Physics of Devices and Materials in One Dimension. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107280779
Biography
Jim Greer is the Li Dak Sum Chair Professor in Advanced Electronic Materials and Devices at the University of Nottingham’s Ningbo, China campus. He held previous positions at Trinity College Dublin and the Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork. Early in his career he worked at Mostek, Texas Instruments, and Hitachi Central Research. His recent industrial collaborations include working with Intel, Samsung, IBM, and TSMC on emerging electronic devices. He led the European Union Excellent Science initiative ASCENT that provided access to advanced semiconductor fabrication facilities at Tyndall (IE), imec (BE) and Leti (FR) for the global research community. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter and the journal Microelectronics Engineering. He received the Intel Outstanding Researcher Award in Simulation & Metrology in 2012. He co-authored Nanowire Transistors: Physics of Devices and Materials in One Dimension [Cambridge University Press: Cambridge (2016)]. His research combines engineering, material science, and physics for electronic technology design.