Abstract

Abstract

Abstract

Abstract

Abstract

Today, integrated circuit technology is approaching the physical limit. From performance and energy consumption perspective, reconfigurable computing is regarded as the most promising technology for future computing systems with excellent feature in computing and energy efficiency. From the perspective of computing performance, compared with single thread performance stagnation of general purpose processors (GPPS), reconfigurable computing may customize hardware according to application requirements, so as to achieve higher performance and lower energy consumption. From the perspective of economics, a microchip based on reconfigurable computing technology has post-silicon reconfigurability, which can be applied in different fields, so as to better share the cost of non-recurring engineering (NRE). High computing and energy efficiency together with unique reconfigurability make reconfigurable computing one of the most important technologies of artificial intelligent microchips.

Towards a sustainable healthcare system, the clinical-grade diagnostic platform should be decentralized into low-cost consumer-grade handheld devices, for broadly and early disease screening and diagnosis. The joint advancement of CMOS biosensors and signal-processing capability has recently transformed bulky laboratory instruments into handheld devices, leading to cost, size and weight reduction by orders of magnitude. This article gives a glimpse of the lab-on-CMOS in-vitro diagnostic (IVD) tools for point-of-care applications.

The 100th anniversary of the birth of Prof. Kun Huang is in this year. Prof. Huang is a paragon of the older generation of Chinese scientists. He had made great achievements in solid state physics. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, he returned to China immediately, and devoted himself to education. He and Prof. Xide Xie initiated the research of semiconductors in China, and established the solid state physics major at Peking University, which has trained a large number of talents for China. In 1977, he became the director of the Institute of Semiconductors of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Led by Prof. Huang, together with Prof. Shouwu Wang, Prof. Lanying Lin and Prof. Shoujue Wang, the semiconductor institute independently overcomes many difficulties and created a group of critical devices which were on international embargo but urgently needed by China. Furthermore, he also made new contributions in the field of semiconductor superlattices. Under his leadership, the State Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Superlattices became one of the internationally leading laboratories. The following are the major scientific contributions of Prof. Kun Huang.

The interplay of magnetic and semiconducting properties has been in the focus for more than a half of the century. In this introductory article we briefly review the key properties and functionalities of various magnetic semiconductor families, including europium chalcogenides, chromium spinels, dilute magnetic semiconductors, dilute ferromagnetic semiconductors and insulators, mentioning also sources of non-uniformities in the magnetization distribution, accounting for an apparent high Curie temperature ferromagnetism in many systems. Our survey is carried out from today's perspective of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic spintronics as well as of the emerging fields of magnetic topological materials and atomically thin 2D layers.

Semiconductor provides a physics-rich environment to host various quantum light sources applicable for quantum information processing. These light sources are capable of deterministic generation of non-classical photon streams that demonstrate antibunching photon statistics, strong indistinguishability, and high-fidelity entanglement. Some of them have even successfully transitioned from proof-of-concept to engineering efforts with steadily improving performance. Here, we briefly summarize recent efforts and progress in the race towards ideal quantum light sources based on semiconductor materials. The focus of this report will be on group III–V semiconductor quantum dots, defects in wide band-gap materials, two-dimensional hosts and carbon nanotubes, as these are well-positioned to benefit from recent breakthroughs in nanofabrication and materials growth techniques.

Since the proposal of the concept of photonic integrated circuits (PICs), tremendous progress has been made. In 2005, Infinera Corp. rolled out the first commercial PICs, in which hundreds of optical functions were integrated onto a small form factor chip for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems[1], then a monolithically integrated 10 × 10 Gb/s WDM chip has been demonstrated, the channel number is ten[2]. Like ICs, large-scale PICs (LS-PICs) will be sure to be pursued. However, there are still some general challenges associated with LS-PICs. The challenges for III–V (mainly InP) PICs is the semiconductor process, which is not mature for LS-PICs. Up to now, the channel number in commercial III–V WDM PICs by Infinera is still about ten or less. For silicon photonics, the challenge is the silicon based light source. The low cost and mature solution for silicon lasers is still unavailable and only 4 × 25 Gb/s PICs are deployed by Intel Corp. after 18-year R&D investment. Thus it is still unavailable for practical LS-PICs in the present times.

Transistor’s invention revolutionized global society by spawning electronics industry. John Bardeen is among one of the inventors of transistor. He was a genius and one of the most influential semiconductor Physicist of 20th century who won two Nobel prizes in Physics.

Despite being the long-time mainstream semiconductor for both logic and power devices, Silicon is now facing its dilemma and limitation of scalability and material potential. Especially for power devices, people are demanding escalating efficiency with higher blocking voltage while its power consumption and heat generation are less. Constrained by its narrow bandgap of 1.14 eV, Silicon only has a critical breakdown field (Ec) of 0.3 MV/cm, yielding a Baliga figure-of-merit (BFOM = ε × μ × Ec3) of unity when normalized to itself. It is hence required that the dominating factor Ec should be as high as possible such that the BFOM will be hundreds or even thousands of times when compared to Silicon so as to minimize the conduction loss. Beta-Gallium Oxide (β-Ga2O3) with decent μ of 250 cm2/Vs, ultra-wide bandgap of 4.8 eV and high critical Ec of 8 MV/cm, yielding a superior high BFOM of more than 3000. Therefore, system made with β-Ga2O3 can be thinner, lighter and capable of handling more power than the one with Silicon. In addition, low-cost and large size substrate through melt-grown method endows β-Ga2O3 more potentials as cost-effective power devices. After resolving the low thermal conductivity issue, unipolar devices made with ultra-wide bandgap β-Ga2O3 are promised to make power transition and our life more efficient.