Message from the Advanced Substrates Chairs:

This year’s Advanced Substrates & Next-Generation Semiconductors ATW (Advanced Substrates 2008) in Linthicum Heights (Baltimore) is promising to be an extremely exciting event as we bring together the divergent technical issues that are before us in the microelectronics community including materials processing and reliability, packaging and applications. This year we’re fortunate to have distinguished scientists Rama Venkatasubramanian, RTI International and Nextreme Founder, and Gang Chen, Warren and Towneley Rohsenow Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT as our keynote speakers from industry and academia, respectively.

There are some overwhelming technical challenges in the microelectronics industry that require a serious dialog among engineers, scientists, academe and industry from around the world. As performance needs increase while available volume per function decreases, silicon and traditional III-V compounds such as GaAs are no longer capable of providing the necessary performance. New materials such as GaN have inherently wider band gap to allow higher voltage and power performance over a wide frequency range. Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) techniques of applying a strain field to the semiconductor active layer to boost the speed at which an electronic signal may be transferred also achieve key performance advantages.  This considerably increases the speed of the electronic circuitry by enhancing charge carrier mobility further, while reducing power consumption three or four times. Likewise, smaller chips invariably tend to get much hotter and the challenge is to dissipate that accumulated heat. Silicon-On-Diamond (SOD), silicon carbide, single crystal aluminum nitride and other nanoscale materials offer great alternatives for viable thermal management. With the advent of novel materials and with the enhancement in their device performance either by themselves or in conjunction with other materials (i.e. heterogeneous integration), this ATW on Advanced Substrates/Next-Generation Semiconductors features multiple aspects from basic materials, processing and reliability issues to implications to packaging and leading-edge applications for commercial and defense activities and others with a view to mitigate the limitations posed by conventional substrates and semiconductors.

We’ve also lined up some excellent talks on new materials and integration for next generation high power and frequency electronics, thermal management and packaging concepts as well as two keynote speakers on the use of integral device level thermoelectric cooling. We expect a reasonable crowd being co-located with MASH, so sign up early!  After you’ve absorbed this wealth of information, make sure to get out and enjoy the famous “Baltimore Inner Harbor,” located just a short drive from the workshop site.

See you in Linthicum Heights!

Sanju Gupta & Susan Trulli
Advanced Substrates 2008 Technical Co-Chairs

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