Carving a Niche in Broadband Wireless
Company founded by Georgia Tech researchers is developing semiconductor chips for a booming
A high-tech company founded by Georgia Institute of Technology faculty and staff members is developing semiconductor chips to fuel the upcoming boom in broadband wireless communication.
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RF Solutions, which is a 2-year-old member company of Georgia Tech's Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), has been transitioning from its roots as a consulting firm specializing in analog circuit design to a product-oriented company.
"We produce the circuits and chips that are the engines of every wireless device," says CEO Steve Richeson. "Our products will be analog and radio frequency semiconductors used in broadband wireless products. These will be in very high demand for future consumer products."
The first RF Solutions chips will be part of a transceiver system allowing cable modems to work in a fixed wireless environment for providing connection to the Internet. But there are many other potential applications for the technology.
"The market is vast because the chips we are making will be in devices that we haven't even thought of yet," Richeson says. "Every wireless device will need to have a transceiver."
The company hopes to grow in a niche semiconductor market dramatically different from the traditional digital silicon. To provide the interface for sending high-bandwidth signals up to 30 miles through the air, the company's chips will be analog and operate at radio frequencies. To meet those performance standards, the circuits will be built on compound semiconductors such as gallium arsenide, a material very different from the silicon that is the foundation for ordinary computer chips.
Though outside the norm for most Silicon Valley companies, analog device design, radio frequency transmission and compound semiconductor fabrication are research strengths at Georgia Tech. The company considers access to this expertise — and skilled graduates — a key competitive factor.
"This is a different technology and a different set of design skills, and in the wireless industry today, there are simply not enough analog design engineers," Richeson explains. "We have access to essentially an unlimited supply of analog engineering talent from Georgia Tech because of our connections and location."
The company also expects to gain an advantage through use of a proprietary design process called X-Cellacore(tm). This process should reduce the time required to put new analog semiconductor chips into production by as much as 60 percent.
"Wireless broadband modems will become consumer electronic devices," Richeson says. "Time to market in that competitive area will be critical. The people who will use our chips will have to differentiate themselves and come up with new products every six months or so."
The company will contract with existing semiconductor fabrication facilities to manufacture its chips. But if that market really takes off, Richeson says Georgia could potentially justify the huge capital investment required to construct a fabrication plant.
— John Toon
The full-text version of this article is posted at www.atdc.org/companies/february232000.html. For more information, contact Catherine Cass, RF Solutions, 430 10th St. NW, Atlanta, GA, 30318. (Telephone: 404-876-7707, Ext. 12) (E-mail: ccass@rfsolutions.com)
Keeping It Clean
Microelectronics work focuses on improved cleaning of
A promising technique for improved cleaning of integrated circuits could replace a method that by design creates an incompatibility, which slows the manufacturing process.
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Integrated circuits (ICs), miniature assemblies of electronic components vital to the electronics industry, must be ultra clean to function properly. Most traditional cleaning processes use liquids, typically acids and bases. But these processes must interface with vacuum chambers, where most IC fabrication steps occur. After liquid cleaning of IC substrates, manufacturers must insert a drying step before starting vacuum processes.
Now, a Georgia Institute of Technology professor has devised a new IC cleaning technique that eliminates that drying step, streamlining the fabrication process and making it more environmentally friendly.
"This new process takes advantage of what we know about liquid cleaning, but modifies the approach to be compatible with vacuum processes," says Dr. Dennis Hess, a professor in the School of Chemical Engineering and an investigator at the Microelectronics Research Center.
In research funded by the National Science Foundation and Los Alamos National Laboratory, Hess is experimenting with a liquid-phase cleaning that can be combined with vacuum processes. He heats water to temperatures above the boiling point while simultaneously adding pressure to keep the water in the liquid phase. After the cleaning is complete, Hess reduces the pressure and flashes the liquid off the surface.
This new technique is also "greener" than other approaches, Hess says, because it uses water instead of the toxic and corrosive chemicals traditionally used for IC cleaning. The technique shows promise, he adds, but he does not yet know if it is feasible for the production process.
"At this point in our work, we need to collaborate with IC equipment manufacturers or IC device manufacturers to try out the method on actual IC wafers so we can assess the stability of the approach for large-scale fabrication," Hess says.
He is discussing the technique with several companies to determine their interest in testing it in the very complex manufacturing process for ICs.
The fabrication of ICs starts with wafers made from ultra-pure silicon, which are polished to a mirror-like finish. Then layers of thin films are deposited onto the wafer. Next, patterns are etched into the film surfaces to define features of individual circuit elements that will compose the circuits. These steps are repeated again and again with different film layers until the IC unit is complete.
This complex fabrication process takes place in a clean room, a specialized manufacturing environment. But even in this ultra-clean environment, cleaning the circuits between processing steps is critical. Of the 400 process steps necessary to make a typical integrated circuit, about 50 to 60 of these involve cleaning the film and substrate surfaces.
"Impurities are naturally introduced through the (manufacturing) process," Hess says. "Cleaning the surfaces is often done as a precautionary measure." But it is a step that is taken very seriously.
A lot of research has been done on cleaning wafers using vapors, but this technique has not been successful so far because of the extreme complexity. Also, the cleanliness level may not be equivalent to that of traditional techniques, Hess says.
Hess' research presents numerous challenges. For example, he has discovered that in spite of the many advantages of using water to clean surfaces, there is a downside: The reactivity of the water is very high and can actually etch the silicon wafer. Therefore, Hess is looking at other options, including the possibility of using additives to mediate the reactivity.
— Patricia J. West
For more information, you may contact Dr. Dennis Hess, School of Chemical Engineering, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0100. (Telephone: 404-894-5922) (E-mail: dennis.hess@che.gatech.edu)
GTRI Journal of Technology
The online GTRI Journal of Technology provides an in-depth look at technology being developed at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Tech's applied research organization. Now in its third volume, the full-text Journal of Technology is available on the Web at www.gtri.gatech.edu/jot/.
The current issue includes technical papers on: testing implantable medical devices against electromagnetic environments; modeling emitters in an air defense environment; and a new system for improving defense supply systems. The titles and authors are:
- E3 Testing of Implantable Medical Devices — Past and Present. Ralph M. Herkert, Jimmy A. Woody and Hugh W. Denny.
- Using OPNET for Modeling of Non-Communications Emitters in an Air Defense Environment. J.R. Marks and K.L. Selvidge.
- Wildcat Tracking System: Cost Savings Through Supply Redistribution. James P. Coleman, Jr. and David P. Millard.
Also see Research Links news stories.
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