Exploration of Ferroelectric Materials and Negative Capacitance Effect for Next-Generation Chips Used in Wireless Mobile Products

降低功耗是无线移动计算行业的持续目标，以延长电池寿命并改善终端用户体验（例如，智能手机和平板电脑）。 因此，了解和利用可能降低功耗的技术对Qualcomm Canada，Inc.至关重要。保持其作为无线射频（RF）应用产品解决方案的世界领先供应商的优势。 一种可能的解决方案是使用铁电电容器来产生“负电容”，以提高开关速度并降低晶体管的功耗。 使用铁电体来改善晶体管性能的工作仅限于最初的想法本身和初步的实验验证。 此外，迄今为止的工作主要集中在数字性能上，没有研究模拟RF应用的可能改进。 高通公司希望了解铁电体是否真的可以提供更高的性能和/或更低的功耗，因为它对未来产品具有战略重要性。 铁电材料是一个特别有前途的改进途径，因为铁电场效应晶体管可以使用现有的制造方法进行很少的修改。 高通公司的硬件和软件计划取决于他们利用最先进的芯片技术。 因此，了解和利用铁电体等新兴技术带来的功耗和性能提升，对于高通公司保持其在无线移动的行业的市场领导者地位具有直接意义。 此外，拟议的工作将有助于创造高素质的人才（HQP），是领先的晶闸管器件和电路技术的专家。 这样的HQP对于加拿大高科技公司保持其全球优势至关重要。

Reduced power consumption is an ongoing goal of the wireless mobile-computing industry to extend battery life and improve end-user experience (e.g., with smartphones and tablets). Understanding and exploiting techniques that may yield reduced power consumption is thus of vital interest to Qualcomm Canada, Inc. to maintain its edge as a world-leading supplier of product solutions for wireless radio-frequency (RF) applications. One possible solution is the use of ferroelectric capacitors to create "negative capacitance" to increase the switching speed and reduce the power consumption of transistors. Work on the use of ferroelectrics for improved transistor performance has been limited to the initial idea itself and preliminary experimental validation. In addition, work to date has focused on digital performance, with no work done on studying possible improvements for analog RF applications. Qualcomm seeks to know whether ferroelectrics can indeed offer improved performance and/or reduced power consumption as it is of strategic importance for future products. Ferroelectric materials are a particularly promising avenue of improvement, since ferroelectric field-effect transistors can be made using existing fabrication methods with very little modification. The hardware and software initiatives of Qualcomm depend on them exploiting the most leading-edge chip technologies available. Understanding and leveraging power-consumption and performance gains facilitated by emerging technologies such as ferroelectrics is thus of direct relevance to Qualcomm in maintaining its position as a market leader in the wireless mobile industry. In addition, the proposed work will contribute to the creation of highly qualified personnel (HQP) that are experts in leading-edge semiconductor-device and circuit technologies. Such HQP are vital for Canadian high-technology firms to retain their global edge.