NSF Convergence Accelerator Track I: Energy-efficient MetaConductors for Convergence of Sustainable Electronics (E-MC2 of Sustainable Electronics)

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Due to a decades-long lack of onshore manufacturing capability and supply chain inequality, the United States (US) suffers from a critical shortage of semiconductor chips and electronic parts. Consequently, the US electronics industry is currently in an unsustainable situation and faces a major economic and national security threat. The goal of this work is to explore Energy-efficient MetaConductors for Convergence of Sustainable Electronics (E-MC2 Sustainable Electronics) for future society and develop manufacturing technologies to translate metaconductors to commercial use to meet the signal/power integrity requirements for modern high-speed, broadband electronic applications. E-MC2 Sustainable Electronics will generate multiple key areas of intellectual property in the manufacturable metaconductor technology space, establishing the US as the leader in both technology and accelerating technology transfer to launch startups and adoption by industry, thus contributing to the growth of the economy and job creation. The multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional team will leverage its previous collaborations, new insights from new alliances, and collective experience in engineering education. The outcome of the inclusive educational activities will be a diverse, well-trained, and globally competent workforce in semiconductor manufacturing and related fields. The team’s unique collaboration with an advocacy group will facilitate dissemination of knowledge to the general public in addition to conventional venues such as professional conferences and journal publications. The Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science Act of 2022 (CHIPS Act) aims to catalyze investments in domestic semiconductor manufacturing capacity and to boost US competitiveness, innovation, and national security. This is a timely intervention for the US electronics industry that suffers from the lack of onshore manufacturing capability and supply chain inequality. A semiconductor chip has two main elements: active devices (transistors) and interconnects connecting devices. Advances in active devices materials, such as new 2-D materials (MoS2, WS2, BN etc.), phase change materials, and conventional Si, GaAs, GaN, InP have made high-energy efficiency and memory/logic functions for system compactness possible. However, interconnect materials still heavily rely on solid copper technology, which has major limitations in lowering radio frequency (RF) resistance. It is imperative to find high-efficiency conductor solutions to enable high-speed computation and broadband communication technologies that operate in the millimeter wave frequencies. Metaconductors consisting of engineered multiple nanoscopic nonferromagnetic and ferromagnetic metals have shown promise in suppressing the skin effect and thus lowering RF resistance and power consumption. The goal of this project is to explore Energy-efficient MetaConductors for Convergence of Sustainable Electronics (E-MC2 Sustainable Electronics) for future society and develop manufacturing technologies to translate the metaconductors to commercial use to meet the signal/power integrity needs for modern high speed, broadband electronic applications. These new metaconductors will be unique, provide significant energy efficiency, and become a game changer for the next generation interconnect and passive technology in tomorrow’s high-speed computing and broadband communications applications. The project harnesses the investigators’ multidisciplinary expertise in metaconductor design and fabrication, process design for manufacturing, nanomaterial and fabrication, and engineering education and workforce development. Through domestic and international collaboration with local government (Osceola County, Florida), academia (Seoul National University, Korea Institute of Energy Technology), and the private sector (Cisco, Intel, Apple, Applied Materials, Samsung, and SkyWater), the team will: design sustainable metaconductors, investigate their scalable manufacturing processes, and create and implement an integrated education and workforce development program. The impact of the project will be an effective technical solution for future electronic conductors; knowledgeable and agile workforce that can rise to global energy challenges in electronic systems; and contribution to the growth of economy via startups and high-skill job creation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.