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Our civilization is destined to be based on electronics. For better or worse. Ever since the invention of the transistor and especially after the advent of integrated circuits, semiconductor devices have kept expanding their role in our life. Electronic circuits entertain us and keep track of our money, they fight our wars and decipher the secret codes of life, and one day, perhaps, they will relieve us from the burden of thinking and making responsible decisions. Inasmuch as that day has not yet arrived, we have to fend for ourselves. The key to success is to have a clear vision of where we are heading in these turbulent times. Identifying the scenario for the future evolution of microelectronics presents a tremendous opportunity for constructive action today. A free-spirited debate between the leading professionals in the Industry, Government, and Academia is the main purpose of the planned Workshop. The celebrated Si technology has known a virtually one-dimensional path of development: reducing the minimal size of lithographic features. This dramatic evolution has both led us to the threshold of nano-technology and at the same brought about doubts regarding future development. Our crystal ball is muddy. This is going to be the nano millennium… but how about femto-electronics? There are clearly physical limits but can we be reasonably sure that electronics will not dip below 1 nm in the next 1000 years?

New electronic materials, most powerful enabler of new technologies, will naturally be a central theme in the program. The evolution of semiconductor electronics has always been intimately connected with advances in material science and technology. Differentiating from usual materials meetings our workshop will discuss materials prospects and fundamentals in the context of future technologies.
The first revolution in electronics, which replaced vacuum tubes with transistors, was based upon doped semiconductors and relied on newly discovered methods of growing pure crystals. The early semiconductors could not be properly termed “doped” - they were just dirty. Today, semiconductors routinely used in devices are cleaner (in terms of the concentration of undesired foreign particles) than the vacuum of vacuum tubes. Subsequent evolution of transistor electronics has been associated with the progress in two areas: (1) miniaturization of device design rules, brought about by advances in the lithographic resolution and doping by ion implantation, and (2) development of techniques for layered-crystal growth and selective doping, culminating in such technologies as MBE and MOCVD, that are capable of monolayer resolution of doping and chemical composition. Of these two areas, the first has definitely had a greater impact in the commercial arena, whereas the second has been mainly setting the stage for the exploration of device physics. These roles may well be reversed in the future. Development of new and exotic lithographic techniques with a nanometer resolution will be setting the stage for the exploration of various physical effects in mesoscopic devices, while epitaxially grown devices (especially heterojunction transistors integrated with optoelectronic elements) will be gaining commercial ground. When (and whether) this role reversal will take place, will be determined perhaps as much by economic as by technical factors. It is anticipated that the lateral miniaturization progress may face diminishing returns when the speeds of integrated circuits and the device packing densities will be limited primarily by the delays and power dissipation in the interconnection rather than individual transistors. Further progress may then require circuit operation at cryogenic temperatures or heavy reliance on optical interconnections. Implementation of the latter within the context of silicon VLSI may usher in hybrid-material systems with heteroepitaxial islands of foreign crystals grown on Si substrates. All these anticipated developments are likely to be heavily dependent on the progress of material science and techniques for epitaxial growth of semiconductor layers. However muddy our crystal ball may be regarding the future trends in microelectronics, one trend appears to be clear: the device designer of tomorrow will be thinking in terms of multilayer structures defined on an atomic scale.
 

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• What is the technical limit to shrinking devices? Is there an economic sense in pursuing this limit? In the memory market? In the microprocessor market?
• What kind of research does the silicon industry need to continue its expansion? Integrated systems?
• What is the technical limit to shrinking devices? Is there an economic sense in pursuing this limit? In the memory market? In the microprocessor market?
• What kind of research does the silicon industry need to continue its expansion? Integrated systems?
• What are the anticipated trends in lithography? 13nm EUV and beyond? Limits? Modeling? Materials? Throughputs? Or, it's time to go for non-lithography?
• The wiring challenge. Beyond the one-shot solution Cu? Optical or superconductor wiring?
• Will wide-area electronics be integrated with VLSI?
• What are the limits to thin film transistors?
• Do we need three-dimensional integration? SOI?
• What are the prospects and constraints of universal wafer bonding?
• To what extent can we trade high speed for low power? Is adiabatic computing in the cards? Ultra-low power electronics, a matter of scaling ?
• What is happening in the evolution (or revolution?) of systems and architectures ?
• Optical interconnects; and hopeful impetus to architecture revolution ?
• Where are the big stake market pulls and pushes for new semiconductor technologies? 3D displays? Human-machine interfaces?
• Nanoelectronics. Where is it heading? We can make quantum-effect devices; can we make them broadly useful? Can we get around problems like critical-biasing? wiring? stochastic fluctuations? large scale integration? Resonant Tunneling, Single Electronics?
• An architecture revolution (or a second von Neumann) required?
• Is quantum computing more than just a mathematical exercise ? Can we have or do we need long-range coherence? Quantum cellular automata?
• Non-lithographic fabrication. Promising alternatives? Broadened horizon? or hopeless pursuits?
• How to answer the DARPA call for "trillion transistors on a chip"? Challenges and/or fundamental problems? Single-electronics?
• Telecom. Photonic networking, the obvious solution? Zero switching network? Are PDH, SDH, and ATM fundamentally flawed and limited?
• LEO satellite network and satellite-on-wafer, a new cause for rethinking of the fiber-optics system ?
• Telecom and computer convergence, implications? network computers? New pushes for speed and bandwidth from 3D TV, digital photography, and virtual reality ?
• Plastic fibers, and tipping the balance of GaAs vs. InP?
• Are there green pastures beyond the semiconductor technologies? What can we expect from combinations with superconducting circuits? Molecular devices? Plastic transistors and polymer optoelectronics? Can we hope for bioelectronics with self-produced designed cells? Any prospect for DNA computing? DNA assisted self assembling and packaging?
• Biotech and microelectronics chips combination? Chip-in-brain, doable but unacceptable?
• Is there a need for (possibility of) integrating compound semiconductor IC's into Si VLSI? What are the merits and prospects of hybrid schemes, such as heteroepitaxy, wafer bonding and packaging?
• What are the most attractive system applications of optoelectronic hybrids? Camcorders? LED-CMOS or LCD-CMOS Projection TVs? Large-area imagers and printers?
• What are the possible implications of opto-electro-microwave interactions?
• Satellite-on-wafer, radar-on-chip, feasible? desired? minor distraction or big stake?
• What can we expect from photonic bandgap structures? Is "Photonic Computer" still a realistic hope or just a dismissible fantasy? Could or should "photonics replacing electronics" ever happen?
• Progress in widegap semiconductor technologies, electronic and photonic. What is happening in narrow gap semiconductors? What are the current status and prospects of cooling technologies. Are intersubband devices a viable alternative? What are the potential applications of the unipolar laser?
• What are current problems and ultimate goals in optical disk memories? Automotive electronics? Potential market?
• Changed roles of industrial, government and academic researchers.

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