Atomera (www.atomera.com), a semiconductor materials and licensing company focused on deploying its proprietary technology into the semiconductor industry, announced MST SP, a new technique capable of delivering a performance improvement of up to 50% in a critical industry parameter. MST SP is a patented, quantum-engineered material, partnered with a new smart doping profile which enhances transistors to deliver significantly better performance in today’s electronics.
Atomera, working with its partner foundry, has demonstrated a breakthrough performance improvement of up to a 50% reduction in channel on-resistance on 5V analog transistors. The semiconductor industry has been struggling for many years to find ways to improve this key metric and now Atomera’s new SP technique has the effect of unleashing MST to deliver this performance improvement.
This new SP technique was achieved through a combination of quantum confinement and dopant profile engineering only made possible by MST. The MST SP breakthrough has applications beyond 5V analog to many other silicon devices, including planar CMOS devices.
“Many semiconductor makers continue to look for ‘More than Moore’ advancements like MST to help them with performance in critical industry products like 5V switches,” said Scott Bibaud, Atomera’s President and CEO. “Our latest MST SP technique provides a breakthrough improvement that is directly applicable to more than a third of our current customers’ applications. We believe that MST SP can also improve many other product areas and will be a key ingredient in high performance electronic devices of the future.”
Many power management integrated circuits and other BCD (Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) mixed signal products use 5V transistors as switches. The key to a good switch is low loss (on-resistance) so that power is not wasted in the switch, and good isolation so that the switch is not affected by voltage swings in the signal path (breakdown voltage). The Industry standard metric for switch performance is the on-resistance at a given breakdown voltage, depending on the switch application.
The two key features of Atomera’s MST SP technology are improved carrier mobility, which lowers on-resistance, and dopant profile engineering, which can provide better control of short channel effects. By harnessing both these features, Atomera’s MST SP has re-engineered the key 5V NMOS switch to provide up to 50% reduction in specific on-resistance without compromising the breakdown voltage or other key device characteristics.
The improvement has been achieved through the combination of mobility improvement and doping profile engineering, which together enable shrinkage of the cell width.
