Physics, Materials Science, and Trends in Microelectronics

Abstract

From the end of world war II to the demise of the cold war, the expenditure on basic research in solid state physics and materials science has often been justified by reference to the invention of the transistor, and the resulting revolution in electronics [1]. It is the stated aim of this conference to study the future of microelectronics, beyond the time when the shrinkage of CMOS feature sizes will have come to a stop. While major western industries are losing confidence in the business generating potential of basic research in physics and materials science, government funding agencies are sponsoring research programmes on esoteric subjects such as quantum devices, single electron tunneling, molecular electronics, atom manipulation, or self-assembly [2]. In doing this, they are guided by the idea that breakthroughs in these fields will shift the physical limits of the miniaturization trend to the nanometer scale, and thereby ensure decades of continued growth for the electronics industry. The fact that this would require “Revolutionary chip architectures which remove the current interconnection limitation to functional density”, as well as “Revolutionary devices which make use of physical phenomena on a much smaller scale than transistors” does not seem to deter the scientific community [3]. Indeed, similar revolutionary ambitions abound in the fields of computing and data storage (the all-optical computer, the biochip, scanned probe data storage,…).