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Completed TRL 3 (started at 2, targeting 4)
Development of a new high speed and high efficiency hybrid crystal structure semiconductor device based on the the recent invention of rhombohedral hybrid crystal epitaxy technology leading the way for fast chipset development using single crystal SiGe.
NASA Langley has succeeded in growing a rhombohedrally oriented single crystal SiGe on sapphire substrate. This opens up new challenges in micro-electronics. Since the carrier mobility in single crystal SiGe shows 2.5 (electron) and 5 (hole) times respectively faster than in mono-crystal silicon, the development of ultra fast chipsets is possible to go beyond the bottleneck of data transmission in telemetry system. These results open up new oppotunities to build other electronic application chipsets beyond the prevailing clock frequency based on the miniaturization of the feature size. The research at NASA will eventually lead to collaboration with industries to build ultra-fast chipsets based on our single crystal SiGe wafers.
Fast and reliable avionics and satellite telemetry systems, radiation-hardened electronics
Avionics and telemetry systems.
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