SBIR-STTR Award

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will be the development of a novel analysis tool for III-V semiconductor compounds with immediate impact in Light Emitting Diode (LED) manufacturing and high-mobility channel device industries. Currently, relatively low yields during epitaxial growth of the LED semiconductor layers cause a significant loss to the industry. High mobility integrated devices and LED epitaxial development teams have access to methods that provide partial information and metrology about the semiconductor layers. The system proposed here will provide complete electrical data on the materials and could cut significantly improve the feedback time, resulting in higher yields and lower manufacturing costs.

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will build a prototype system to directly measure high-resolution mobility and activation profiles for III-V semiconductors. Currently, electrical profiling methods do not measure mobility profiles of activated materials that form the basis of the III-V semiconductor device industries. Thus, researchers cannot take into account the effect of process variations on the mobility profiles of the electronic materials. This prevents the complete electrical characterization of the material, and the optimization of the material growth/implantation and activation processes. The anticipated outcome of this project is a functional system that will provide better and quicker analysis on electronic materials.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to accelerate advancement in high-mobility materials. These materials are being increasingly used in the electronics device industry. This project's goal is to enable better devices by providing complete data on the effects of manufacturing processes and better enabling their optimization. Innovative electronic device structures such as faster computer chips, and more powerful RF circuits require development of smaller and smaller devices employing more advanced materials. The innovation that is being advanced through this Phase II program directly impacts this development.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop a deployable system to directly measure high-resolution mobility, resistivity, and carrier concentration profiles for high-mobility semiconductor materials. Current electrical profiling methods provide partial data for these material systems that form the basis of the multi-billion dollar semiconductor logic device and RF/power chip industries. The objectives of this Phase II program are to further demonstrate a prototype by developing and integrating high-reliability sub-systems to build a beta-level measurement tool with nm-level resolution. This is expected to reduce the semiconductor wafer area needed to evaluate high-mobility materials, and develop the measurement capability to target all high-mobility materials with potential applications in IC and RF/power industries.