(Plenary) The Revival of Compound Semiconductors and How They Will Change the World in a 5G/6G Era

Compound semiconductor devices have always intrigued the semiconductor industry due to their high intrinsic mobilities and the heterostructure engineering enabled by those materials. While CMOS has been the vehicle pushing the industry to ever smaller devices, better performance and of course reduced cost, the unique properties of compound semiconductor devices are finding renewed interest in an era where an increasing amount of data is being sent around, stored and analyzed. While several applications like photonics, high-power electronics and image sensors also benefit from enabling a variety of III-V materials and devices, specifically, in the RF Front-End Modules of 5G radio chips [1], these materials allow to address the challenges related to speed, efficiency and output power needed for this next generation wireless communication standard. And while 5G is in full deployment, with first addressing the sub-6GHz frequency bands and in a later phase the mm-wave frequency bands, first publications are already appearing on 6G, where even higher frequencies (beyond > 100GHz) will be targeted [2]. GaN [3] and InP-based devices [4] have a clear performance advantage over Si CMOS and SiGe HBT/BICMOS, but their lower integration potential, still restricted to smaller size substrates and lab-like processing today, is one of the key limitations for adopting those technologies for high-volume 5G and 6G applications. Upscaling those devices to a 200mm/300mm Si platform will be a first step to improve yield and maturity and increase complexity. In a second phase, upscaling and maturing these technologies will allow to co-integrate these devices, usually quite dissimilar to CMOS, with advanced Si technology nodes and provide a fully integrated heterogeneous system. In this talk, we will review the status and progress toward integrating these devices on a CMOS-compatible platform. References [1] N. Collaert et al., "Semiconductor technologies for next generation mobile communications", 14th IEEE International Conference on Solid-State and Integrated Circuit Technology - ICSICT, pp. 1-4, Nov. 2018. [2] White Paper from NTT Docomo regarding 6G, January 2020, [Online]. Available: https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/binary/pdf/corporate/technology/whitepaper_6g/DOCOMO_6G_White_PaperEN_20200124.pdf [3] U. Peralagu et al., “CMOS-compatible GaN-based devices on 200mm-Si for RF applications: integration and performance”, IEDM 2019, pp.398-401. [4] A. Vais et al., “First demonstration of III-V HBTs on 300mm Si substrates using nanoridge technology”, IEDM 2019, pp. 178-181.