NanoFab - New Ways in Nanoelectronics

Research funding creates jobs. This was demonstrated by the start of the production of 300 mm wafers for chip production in Freiberg on 22 June 2004. It was demonstrated by the topping-out ceremony in May for the AMD chip factory for modern Athlon processors. Thanks to state funding, Dresden has become the most important location for micro- and nanotechnology in Europe: The funding of these technologies has created 11,000 new jobs in the Dresden region alone. NanoFab is now looking for new ways of manufacturing nanoelectronics.

The market for electronic components equals about €20 billion in Germany alone. Over 70,000 employees are directly employed in the component industry. The systems assembled from these components have a market value of about €100 billion; the modern electronics industry worldwide has a turnover of €800 billion. It is the leading producing industry and has even overtaken the automotive industry.

The spreading of this technology has become possible by increasingly efficient methods of design and production which achieved an unparalleled drop in prices and, simultaneously, impressive increases in performance. 30 years ago, a one megabit DRAM memory cost the equivalent of 75,000 euro, while it costs just a few cents today. Only 50 years after the invention of the first transistor, over 100 million transistors can be placed on a single computer processor.

Nanofabrication

This development is still experiencing a growing dynamism. Microelectronics is further developed into nanoelectronics with even better performance of even smaller components at even lower cost.

This decline of marginal unit cost is based on the unique characteristics of the chip material silicon. Only silicon can be produced in great volumes with the greatest perfection and is therefore the basis for a materials system dominating present and future electronics. Germany has a leading position in the production and processing of perfect silicon wafers with 200mm and 300mm diameter for memories and processors which offer clear benefits in terms of the economic efficiency of electronics production.

BMBF research support in recent years has decisively contributed to making Germany, once again, a competitive location for the production of microelectronics and for research with promising results in nanoelectronics.

Objectives

Micro- and nanoelectronics are indispensable for Germany, which wants to position itself as a leader in the world market of innovative technological products, and they are of growing importance in the value added chain. Countries all over the world are trying to attract research and production facilities of this globally acting industry. Here, research funding plays a central role. It contributes to ensuring Germany's attractiveness. The BMBF expects its further funding in the area of nanofabrication - in the form of collaborative projects under industrial leadership - to generate once again major benefits for Germany as a business location.

Research funding is focused on the following priorities, among others:

• highly complex circuit structures and systems for new areas of application in silicon nanoelectronics, and
• components and system innovations of silicon power electronics.

Special challenges for research are:

• basic and circuit structures for new memory generations into the 64 gigabit range,
• extremely high frequency Si circuits with working frequencies over 100 GHz,
• innovative basic and circuit structures for logical circuits of the highest integration density and the lowest power dissipation,
• realization of VLSI non-volatile memory and logical components, and
• novel configurations for the growing together of sensor subsystems.

Chip systems and design methodology

With state-of-the-art production technology, the design of a chip is the real bottleneck. It has become necessary to increase the productivity of chip design and facilitate design by means of automation, in order for Germany to maintain its very good starting position to be the first country to develop new areas and to gain the lead in further fields. Furthermore, new approaches to chip system design are to be developed.

All in all, conditions have to be created for integrating entire systems on one chip, including their sensors, actors and displays with their very different technical facets. New technological possibilities lead to new challenges for the development of circuits:

• due to the minimization of structures and the growing size of chips, the number of transistors per chip crosses the billion piece-limit,
• the frequency increases into areas where a partial spreading of the signals as wave must be taken into account,
• production cycles in the system area are reduced, and
• the diversity of functions to be integrated is growing rapidly.

The objective of these approaches is

• to enhance the leading position of Germany in systems-on-chip, and
• to achieve stable cooperation between industry and science in implementing results from basic research.