During the past 80 years, applied physics has pushed, inspired, and produced major high-tech industries, from computing, communication, memory, display, transportation, to energy. This has been unprecedented in human history of science and technology. Applied physics has played a drastically different role than the conventional paths taken by academic science and traditional industries. Quantum phenomena (and the related theories), new materials/atomic-scale thin films (and their fabrication tools such as molecular beam epitaxy, atomic layer deposition, metal-organic chemical vapor deposition), novel/high-performance devices, and atomic-scale probing tools have been intertwined and generated useful and essential products beneficial to human being, in revolutionizing computing/communication, and drastically improving medical diagnosis.
Very importantly, new physics/application has been discovered, such as transistors, lasers, quantum Hall effect/fractional quantum Hall effect, fiber optics, charge-coupled devices, 2-dimensional quantum materials.
Applied physics has been strongly engaging in materials science, electrical/electronic devices, and high-tech industries. We have designed this new course of “Advanced applied physics topics in ultimate and beyond CMOS” in the Fall Semester of 2016. The focus will be on nano-electronics for ultimate CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) and beyond, which needs strong understanding of solid-state and semiconductor physics and new materials such as spintronics and topological insulators. These topics are enabling advanced devices for Taiwan’s industry.
In nano-electronics, the high- plus metal gate, which replaced conventional SiO2 and poly-Si and resolved the gate leakage issue since the 45 nm node CMOS production, is one of the most important recent innovations in semiconductor industry, and puts the dominant role of Si as the major semiconductor into question. The new technology of high- plus metal gate on high mobility semiconductors like Ge and InGaAs integrated with Si will lead to faster devices with low power consumption. The present feverish world-wide research efforts are integrating advanced research programs on nano-science, nano-materials, and nano-electronics cohesively to enable a high performance “green” IC technology.
Spintronics and topological insulators are being feverishly studied for beyond the present CMOS based on the charges of the electrons.