About the Semiconductor Electronics Division
Since 1955, the Semiconductor Electronics Division has had a strong history of improving manufacturing productivity and aiding in development, transfer, and application of semiconductor technology. To accomplish its mission, the Division works closely with industry, other government agencies, standards organizations, and universities.
The Division, with a staff of about 80 including full-time and part-time employees as well as guest researchers, post-doctoral associates, and contractors, is based in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The Division is one of four divisions within the Electronics and Electrical Engineering Laboratory at NIST. The Division's technical activities are organized into three groups: the Enabling Devices and ICs Group, the CMOS and Novel Devices Group, and the Electronic Information Group. The Division assists industry by providing tools such as SRMs, test chips, standard reference data, and software that support the needed measurement infrastructure. Division personnel visit industrial sites, host a variety of visitors, and make available tutorial material on an as-needed basis. We also are active in conference and workshop activities that directly benefit the industry.
A broad array of activities that serve the semiconductor industry is currently underway in the Division. The staff of the SED addresses projects ranging from materials qualification to test structures for integrated circuits. Some of these projects are supported by the NIST National Semiconductor Metrology Program (NSMP), which is managed by the Electronics and Electrical Engineering Laboratory's Office of Microelectronics Programs. For more information on the NSMP, please visit their Web site.
The Division, in cooperation with the National Research Council (NRC), offers competitive awards for post-doctoral research for U.S. citizens in a variety of technical fields related to the semiconductor electronics industry.
The semiconductor electronics industry is outstripping the measurement capability needed for maintaining and improving U.S. international competitiveness. Important factors affected include product performance, price, quality, compatibility, and time to market. The Semiconductor Electronics Division provides the measurement capability needed to support the efforts of U.S. industry to improve its competitiveness. In order to support this effort, the Division also engages in technology development and fundamental research, making the findings available to industry.
The Division focuses the largest part of its resources on the development and delivery of measurement capability for two principal reasons: measurement capability has a very high impact on U.S. industry because it helps manufacturers address many of the challenges they face in realizing competitive products in the marketplace, and NIST is the official lead U.S. Government agency for measurements.
The Division focuses on developing measurement capability that is beyond the reach of the broad range of individual companies. Companies seek NIST's help for several reasons:
- The companies need NIST's special technical capability for measurement development.
- The companies need NIST's acknowledged impartiality for diagnosing a measurement problem affecting the industry broadly or for achieving adoption of a solution across the industry.
- The companies cannot develop the measurement capability needed by the industry broadly because they cannot individually capture the returns of the cost of development.
- Industry's quality standards require that key measurements be traceable to the national measurement reference standards that NIST maintains. This is a requirement of growing importance in export markets.
