DETROIT – Charles Winter, Ph.D., professor of chemistry in Wayne State University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, was recently awarded a grant for his work on the growth of metal and metal-silicon thin films for advanced transistors.

This $554,853, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Chemistry will benefit Winter’s study, “GOALI: Volatile and Thermally Stable Precursors for the Thermal Atomic Layer Deposition of Lanthanide Metal and Lanthanide Silicide Films.”

Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaisons with Industry – or GOALI –   is a NSF program that allows university faculty to submit proposals with industry relevance.

Winter’s research focuses on investigating new molecules and chemical reactions that can enable the growth of metal and metal-silicon thin films for advanced transistors, such as those used in tech devices like computers, phones and cars. The Winter research group will use a technique known as “atomic layer deposition,” which is revolutionizing the engineering of computer chips. Atomic layer deposition requires the use of chemical compounds with specifically tailored properties, which the Winter group will prepare and evaluate with support from this grant.

“What we’re trying to do is make better gate metals for microelectronics, specifically for transistors,” said Winter. “The properties of the gate electrode — which is a conducting material in a transistor — must be just right. There is a class of materials called silicides which are chemical compounds composed of a metal and silicon. We want to test and implement these materials in advanced microelectronic devices.”

Winter’s team collaborates with Applied Materials Inc. to develop these novel thin film deposition processes. Applied Materials set up a lab at Wayne State in 2018 and provides state-of-the-art deposition tools and instrumentation for thin film analysis.

“I have several former students who now work at Applied Materials and there is an Applied Materials research lab within my lab,” said Winter. “We are in the seventh year of this relationship. Applied Materials funds research projects in my group. We are working on a problem of extreme importance that might have an enormous impact on several industries.”

Among those former students collaborating with Winter as part of Applied Materials is Tom Knisley, senior manager of process chemistry.

“The AI era of computing is upon us and the race for AI leadership is underway,” said Knisley. “However, the sudden demand for building AI-focused data centers is expected to increase U.S.-based electricity demand by nearly 10% by 2030. Therefore, there is a strong appetite for chip innovations that lead to lower power consumption without a negative impact on performance. The work with Professor Winter at Wayne State has the potential to change this landscape completely. Advances from the collaborative research will have profound effects on the power consumption at the transistor-level of a chip. When scaled across billions of transistors per device, the impact of success could be transformative.”

“We want to make smaller faster, and cheaper microelectronic devices with more transistors packed onto a chip and lower power consumption,” said Winter. “Lower power consumption can make a huge difference. Even the reduction of power consumption by a small percent can have a huge impact worldwide when you think about how many devices are out there.”

“This important NSF grant to Dr. Winter has the potential to be very influential in many technology sectors,” said Ezemenari M. Obasi, Ph.D., vice president for research and innovation at Wayne State University. “This work may result in an enormous positive impact on not only industry, but on the lives of many in the years to come.”

The grant number for this National Science Foundation award is 2403780.

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