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IQE has announced the beginning of Phase II of the major US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract that is funding the development of Compound Semiconductor Materials on Silicon (COSMOS). Advanced semiconductor wafer producer IQE is developing the epitaxial growth process at its manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania for the research project led by Raytheon Integrated Defense System.
The company embarked upon Phase I of the project back in September 2007. At that stage, the goal of the project was the development of a viable process to integrate compound semiconductor materials with silicon, with the goal of dramatically improving linearity, dynamic range and bandwidth of radio frequency (RF) devices.
Focusing on improving both the yield and density of the heterogeneous epitaxial growth of InP HBTs, Phase II will aim to carry out this research with conventional silicon-based CMOS processes.
Ultimately, the program’s founders hope to combine high-performance compound semiconductors with low-cost commercial CMOS wafers to cut costs and improve performance.
"Selective placement of semiconductor compounds on silicon is an important achievement because it proves that optimal circuit performance can be produced through a heterogeneous, high-yield, monolithic integration process," said Dr. Tom Kazior, program manager at Raytheon IDS.
Joining Raytheon as part of the project are Teledyne Scientific Imaging Company in California; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Paradigm Research LLC in New Hampshire; Soitec in France and Silicon Valley Technology Center (SVTC) in California.