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NewswireToday - /newswire/ -
Winchester, Hampshire, United Kingdom, 12/06/2006 - Innovator provides support to research consortium pushing the limits of silicon integration down to Nanometric dimensions - (ICs).
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Innos, the UK’s leading research and development company for innovations in nanoscale technology, today announced that it is providing integration engineering support and prototyping services for the UK Framework 6 Network of Excellence SiNANO project. The consortium is funded by the EU, with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) providing additional access to the Innos fabrication facility to the different UK academic partners. The underlying principle of the project is to explore different technology routes and achieve very high speed, silicon-based nanoscale devices, which can be adopted in the future engineering of ICs.
Each partner in the SiNANO provides the different areas of expertise required in developing these advanced devices using basic materials science, from the design and fabrication through to characterisation and device modelling. The research will aim to enhance device performance and integration in order to meet the ever-increasing demands placed upon components in communications and computing technology.
In order to support the four main UK partners Innos has set up an internal task force led by Commercial Integration Engineer at Innos’ Southampton headquarters, Dr. Riccardo Varrazza. A team of engineers directed by Process Engineer at Innos, Dr. Enrico Gili, is developing and managing the engineering and fabrication of the prototype devices. This allows Innos to focus on the project management and integration engineering issues of the work carried out with each partner within SiNANO project, while the academics focus on the research.
Comments Dr Varrazza, “Supporting and managing such varied projects is not an easy task, which can be solved only with Innos’ ability to provide a diverse range of different skill sets.”
Dr Gili adds, “Even though each partner is investigating a different area of nanoscale Silicon application, our engineers are able to provide prototyping for the different devices for each partner, so that they can concentrate on the research elements.”
The Sinano is pushing the principles of Moore’s law by driving the limits of these Silicon devices right down to the nanoscale level and Innos is facilitating this premise in everything it does. As Dr Varrazza continues, “Achieving the production of IC components at nanometric dimensions could herald a revolution in IC technology, involving the integration of nanoscale CMOS and emerging post-CMOS logic and memory devices. Together with Sinano we are committed to enhance device performance and integration, to meet the ever increasing demands of communications and computing.”
The four academic partners being supported by Innos are the Universities of Warwick, Southampton, Cambridge and Newcastle.
The University of Warwick, headed by Prof. Evan Parker and Prof. Terry Wall is focusing on the investigation of the properties of Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) and its development, through a set of oxidisation processes and a Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) batch.
Dr Douglas J.Paul of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge and his team of researchers are attempting to integrate SiGe quantum devices with strained-Si CMOS.
Prof. Antony O’Neal team is already working on strained Si Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors (HBT) and will soon be developing novel Strained Si CMOS.
The team at the University of Southampton headed by Prof. Peter Ashburn is tackling vertical gate Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors (MOSFETS) for use in ambient intelligence’ technology, and post-CMOS devices that look at ways of extending the life of traditional CMOS devices.
About Innos
Innos (innos.co.uk) is the UK’s leading research and development company for innovations in nanoscale technology. From its headquarters in Southampton, Innos provides industry and academic institutions with access to full processing capability for silicon-based devices. It has an expert team of engineers, technicians and academics in addition to over 20 years experience of silicon processing expertise, applying nanomaterials concepts to silicon-based devices. Using the world-class Philips Microsystems Plaza (MiPlaza), Innos clients benefit from the most comprehensive tool-set and expertise to serve the market with the diverse and complete processes that are required.
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