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A new IMEC programme will investigate the use of semiconducting wires, carbon nanotubes and spintronics in efforts to find alternatives to the current use of scaling to reduce device dimensions.
A new IMEC programme will investigate the use of semiconducting wires, carbon nanotubes and spintronics in efforts to find alternatives to the current use of scaling to reduce device dimensions. Also under study will be the metrology and theoretical approaches needed as a backbone for implementation of the new nanotechnologies. The programme will also investigate disruptive technologies or new paradigms for semiconductor manufacturing processes.

In the first phase of research, the potential of semiconducting wires will be studied. IMEC's fabrication process for making these vertical-pillar structures is now sufficiently mature to start evaluating their use in back-end-of-line (BEOL) processing, in particular as vias between metal layers. The typical dimensions of the pillars (20nm to 100nm) match perfectly state-of-the-art optical lithography. IMEC believes that this gives an ideal link between evolutionary and revolutionary technologies. Applications may be possible in both optical and switching components.

Next, the research will investigate the growth of carbon nanotubes. A main roadblock in this area is "chirality", or the variation in diameter and structure of the tubes. A third key area of research will focus on spintronics, or electron spin. Electron spin is a viable candidate for replacing the role of electron charge, as spin effects can be robust. The IIAP will identify roadblocks and explore opportunities of implementing spintronics in combination with silicon technology.

To support this research, the programme will develop metrology guidelines and provide theoretical quantitative models to describe newly observed phenomena in nanoelectronics. This will help researchers understand matter at the nanometric scale. IMEC believes that combined theoretical, modelling and experimental work is fundamental to addressing nanoelectronicm, challenges.

Veeco Instruments and Dow Chemical have been awarded $6.6mn in research funds from the US Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Advanced Technology Program (ATP). A three-year project will develop a quantitative nano-mechanical measurement instrument. Veeco and Dow's proposal was one of 32 selected for award funding from a total of 870 following a peer-reviewed selection process.

Veeco and Dow propose to jointly develop and validate the world's first platform for high speed, high bandwidth, quantitative nano-mechanical measurements (QNM) on length scales smaller than 50nm, on a wide range of materials. Successful completion of this proposal would lead to the creation of a new measurement platform enabling the development and characterisation of new nanomaterials. The QNM will be developed at Veeco. The platform will be based on recently demonstrated advancements in atomic force microscopy (AFM). Veeco brings expertise in AFM science and instrumentation, while Dow's expertise is in nanomaterial science and advanced characterisation.

Freescale Semiconductor (Motorola's semiconductor subsidiary) and IMEC are working together on reconfigurable multiprocessor systems. By joining IMEC's Industrial Affiliation Program (IIAP), Freescale plans to deliver leading edge mobile multimedia solutions by using IMEC's existing and future reconfigurable technology. IMEC's solution is characterised by a complete system, low-power approach.

The architecture is based on IMEC's processor architecture template, which combines very-long instruction word (VLIW) processors and coarse-grain reconfigurable hardware. The combination of these two highly parallel processor architectures complemented with adequate memory architecture, provides an ultra-low-power ASIP (application-specific instruction set processor) with increased flexibility and performance.

Together with the architecture template, a C compiler is being developed to provide efficient mapping of applications and to allow a fast design cycle while keeping the performance breakthrough delivered by the new architecture.

Intel, Nokia and Symbian announced a collaboration to bring smartphones based on the Nokia Series 60 Platform to market using Intel technology as part of Intel's recent membership in the Nokia Series 60 Product Creation Community. Also, Intel and Symbian have agreed to invest in the joint development of a reference platform to enable a new class of 3G devices based on the Symbian operating system (OS) and Intel's XScale architecture.

The Series 60 Platform has been licensed by mobile phone manufacturers such as LG Electronics, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung and Siemens. It supports a large colour screen, an easy-to-use interface and an extensive suite of applications such as email, browsing and streaming.

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