Conferences

Abstracts

13:10 - 14:00
Nanoelectronics collaboration - a major step towards a prosperous world
Luc Van den hove, President and CEO
The whole world is talking about the grand challenges of the 21st century. A prosperous and sustainable world, where we cleverly consume renewable energy, and where the modern diseases can be treated at a very early stage or even prevented, where healthcare is affordable to anyone, and where there are no borders in connecting with family and friends. It might look just as a dream but the nanoelectronics industry is worldwide joining forces to make this dream come true.
As a leading player in nanoelectronics research and development, imec aims at playing a role model to realize this dream. Imec gives the worldwide industry a cost-effective vehicle to accelerate the development of a sustainable world by setting up joint research programs in emerging application domains such as efficient healthcare, photovoltaics and smart energy consumption, unlimited wireless communications, ultimate vision systems, … but also in nanoelectronics technology and system design which are indispensible for these future systems.
Starting from a vision on the future, this presentation will show how nanoelectronics will play a crucial role in all aspects of a future sustainable world and which technologies and collaborations are needed to realize this world everybody’s striving to.

14:00 - 14:25
Photovoltaics on the verge of industrial maturity?
Jef Poortmans, Department director solar and organic technologies
The Photovoltaics (PV) market has been growing massively over the last decade and this growth is expected to continue in the coming decade at a similar pace. As a result of rapidly declining prices for PV-modules and –systems, one can see a tendency towards consolidation taking place in order to take profit of scale advantages. Nevertheless, the conclusion that photovoltaic devices and systems are approaching full technical maturity without further room for significant improvement is not correct. Through the presentation examples will provided on the level of cell and module developments at imec how improvements in terms of efficiency, cost and energy yield are enabled by the application of approaches which were up to now rather limited to microelectronics.
In the frame of our R&D-program on crystalline Si solar cells and photovoltaic stacks, a large effort is spent towards applying techniques like ion implantation, Cu-metallization, epitaxial growth of thin highly doped layers for emitter and back surface fields, Atomic Layer Deposition and cleaning expertise to increase the performance of thin, large-area crystalline Si solar cells. Also for PV-modules and specific systems for concentration photovoltaic devices we are tapping in from experience with thin-film microelectronic systems. Obviously, this only makes sense when the technologies tested are compatible with the required low Cost-of-Ownership (CoO) for photovoltaic applications. The entrance of many semiconductor equipment companies in the PV-field, also for this non-conventional approaches, represents a clear proof that the required low CoO is achievable. The performances obtained and the targeted CoO will be discussed both in this presentation.

14:25 - 14:45
GaN-on-Si technology for power and LED applications
Serge Biesemans, Vice-president process technology
GaN is a recent technology that has triggered tremendous interest by the semiconductor manufacturers because of its unique intrinsic properties like high bandgap and high mobility among others. Both lighting (LED) and power devices have been demonstrated in labs and at small scale and wafer production. The mission of the imec GaN IIAP program is to provide an R&D platform to bring the technology to 200mm Si wafer production equipment. This presentation will review the status and challenges.

14:45 - 15:10
Wearable healthcare
Bert Gyselinckx, general manager Holst Centre/imec, and program director HUMAN++
The future of healthcare is wearable, digital and wireless. Imec contributes to this vision by researching innovative technologies for low-cost and wearable healthcare. Aligned with needs from industrial and clinical partners, technology innovation materializes in new product and application concepts. This talk will introduce some of the most important achievements of the last few years in wearable health. Imec’s latest prototypes of wearable health monitors will be presented. An ECG necklace provides 24/7 monitoring of cardiac activity for over 7 days. It allows early detection of cardiovascular disorders. A wireless headset brings EEG monitoring to the patient’s home, removing the need for cumbersome electrode set-up. The headset can be used to provide real-time feedback on the user’s cognitive state, or to detect epileptic seizure in ambulatory conditions. It also provides a platform to develop brain computer interface, such as a MindSpeller. A network of wearable sensors, distributed on the body, measures physiological responses correlated to a particular mental or emotional state. Providing the user with an estimation of his stress level allows him to better manage his lifestyle and working conditions. Deployment of these prototypes in pilot experiments and real-life situations reveal important remaining challenges. Addressing them will contribute in shaping the healthcare of 2020.

15:10 - 15:30
Bionano for powerful healthcare diagnostics and therapy
Wolfgang Eberle, Manager biolelectric systems group - program manager cell interfacing technology
Healthcare needs to follow societal trends and provide powerful diagnostics and therapeutical solutions for important threats. Neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, psychiatric disorders, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer are such major diseases. We provide technological innovations to medical and pharmaceutical partners based on bionanotechnology. Powerful CMOS integrated in vitro platforms for automated cell culture analysis with single-cell resolution helps pharmaceutical partners in reducing cost and improving efficacy of their drug development process.
Complemented with sample pre-processing steps and biomolecular surface functionalization, these platforms also form the basis for point-of-care systems for biomolecular sensing, e.g. to diagnose cancer or infections. Complex engineered nanoparticles injectable into the cardiovascular system track down cancer cells and allow highly efficient hyperthermia treatments. Brain and spinal cord implantable microsystems improve efficiency in vivo pharmacology, speed up the development of new medical therapies against various brain diseases, and enable human implants based on electrical deep brain stimulation and recording principles.

16:00 - 16:20
Low-impact radios for a sustainable future internet
Liesbet Van der Perre, Director green radio program line
Until five years ago, research in wireless communications was mainly geared towards offering ever higher data rates and improving coverage. Today however, we have become aware that reducing energy consumption in conjunction with increasing capacity will be essential to sustain a further evolution towards viable, ubiquitous connectivity. Imec’s green radio program line pioneers design solutions for tomorrow’s wireless communications. By conceiving innovative architectures and circuits and exploiting the newest technologies, the power consumption and cost are drastically reduced.
We will present the latest results in our reconfigurable radio and 60GHz programs, where both on the analog front-end and digital baseband our latest designs feature extended possibilities at record low power consumption.

16:20 - 16:45
NVISION: towards ultimate vision systems
Francesco Pessolano, Manager NVision program
NVision is the imec research program focused on enabling innovation in vision systems by combining application with technology development. While each of these two components can individually bring improvements, the combination of both can bring substantial advancement in the state-of-the-art providing a sustainable competitive edge to our partners. In this presentation we will present the objectives of the program and discuss progress in a number of NVision projects.

16:45 - 17:05
Pushing lithography to enable ultimate nanoelectronics
Kurt Ronse, Director advanced lithography program
EUV lithography is still the main candidate for printing critical features at the sub-22nm technology nodes.
In this presentation, the progress in EUV lithography of the past 12 months will be reviewed, covering both the progress seen in imec’s advanced lithography program (resist status, reticle status, full-field scanner performance status), as well as the overall progress reported in the world (development of high power EUV source, status reticle inspection infrastructure, ...).
The main challenges forward will be addressed. Based on the status and challenges, an EUV roadmap towards 10nm devices will be proposed.

17:05 - 17:30
Logic and memory scaling beyond 22nm
Thomas Y. Hoffman, Director logic DRAM front-end-of-line program
This presentation will provide a high level overview of recent device scaling achievements for advanced technology nodes. After reviewing how the introduction of novel materials like High-K & metal gate has enabled to resume Moore’s law at the 32nm node, we will detail how this material revolution is fully compatible with 3D device architecture like FinFET, for further scaling down to the 22nm node & beyond. Looking even further down the scaling road, we will assess the potential of novel device concepts like for instance the high-mobility channel devices towards the 15nm node & beyond.

17:30 - 17:55
Nano interconnect and 3D system scaling
Rudi Cartuyvels, Vice-president process technology
This talk covers the progress in ultimate scaling of CMOS interconnect technologies and 3D system scaling technology.
An overview of nano interconnect technologies for sub 20 nm dimensions will be given. Challenges in patterning, dielectric integrity and metallisation options will be presented. Chip stacking allows to further improve system scaling performance. The latest progress in Through Silicon Via (TSV) and chip stacking technologies will be presented.

17:55 - 18:20
INSITE: technology-design interaction
Diederik Verkest, Scientific director of the digital components group
INSITE is imec’s research program that connects the work in advanced process technology research to system design. Both system design and process technology grow increasingly complex. Designing with advanced technology becomes ever more difficult and this add risks and delays the introduction of new technology into products. The INSITE program makes information from imec’s advanced process technology research programs available in formats that can be used by product designers for early assessment of the impact and potential of those technologies for product roadmaps and, vice versa, derive specifications for technology from system specifications.