STATUS OF RADIO FREQUENCY, HIGH FREQUENCY, AND ANALOG/MIXED-SIGNAL TECHNOLOGIES: CHALLENGES AND POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS

Published

March 11, 2013

Author(s)

Herbert S. Bennett, John J. Pekarik

Abstract

Radio frequency (RF), high frequency, and analog/mixed-signal (A/MS) technologies serve the rapidly growing communications and More-than-Moore (MtM) markets and represent essential and critical technologies for the success of many semiconductor manufacturers. Communications products and emerging products with functionalities enabled by MtM, RF, HF, and A/MS technologies are becoming key drivers for volume manufacturing. Consumer products account for over half of the demand for semiconductors. Fourth generation (4G) cellular phones and tablets now have a much higher semiconductor content and now are a very large fraction of the mobile market compared to only 5 % of the market a few years ago. The iPAD for example has more than 19 RF and A/MS front-end components. The consumer portions of the RF and A/MS markets are very sensitive to cost. With different technologies capable of meeting technical requirements, time to market and overall system cost will govern technology selection. The RF, HF, and A/MS technologies presented herein depend on many materials systems, some of which are compatible with complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) processing, such as SiGe, and others of which have not traditionally been compatible with CMOS processing such as those compound semiconductors composed of elements from groups III and V and from other elements in group IV such as carbon in the periodic table. Compound and carbon-based semiconductors become more significant as today’s emerging research devices, especially those devices based on the More-than-Moore (MtM) technologies are deployed in the marketplace

Citation

Future Fab International

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

field effect, bipolar. millimeter-wave, embedded, passive, and active devices, More-than-Moore, heterogeneous integration, compound semiconductors, microelecromechanical systems (MEMS), and complementary metal oxide semiconductors (CMOS).

Citation

Bennett, H. and Pekarik, J. (2013), STATUS OF RADIO FREQUENCY, HIGH FREQUENCY, AND ANALOG/MIXED-SIGNAL TECHNOLOGIES: CHALLENGES AND POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS, Future Fab International (Accessed April 24, 2024)