Institute for Microelectronics Stuttgart
| Institute for Microelectronics Stuttgart | |
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| founding | July 18, 1983 |
| Sponsorship | Foundation under civil law |
| place | Stuttgart |
| state | Baden-Württemberg |
| country | Germany |
| management | Joachim Burghartz |
| Employee | 100 (September 11, 2014) |
| Website | www.ims-chips.de |
The Institute for Microelectronics Stuttgart ( IMS CHIPS ) is a recognized non-profit foundation under civil law on the Stuttgart-Vaihingen research campus . It conducts business-related research in the field of microelectronics in the areas of silicon technology, user-specific circuits (ASIC), nanostructuring and image sensors and is involved in professional training. The institute is a member of the Baden-Württemberg Innovation Alliance (innBW), a cooperation of twelve contract research institutions in Baden-Württemberg. One hundred employees work under the direction of Joachim Burghartz in selected areas of microelectronics and their application in practice.
Under the trade name IMS CHIPS, the Institute for Microelectronics Stuttgart operates, among other things, as a manufacturer of microchips and a provider of various process services. The institute is financed according to the “third principle”, i. H. a third of the budget has to be generated from industry income, a third from public funds and a third is financed by the state of Baden-Württemberg as a basic grant.
history
The Institute for Microelectronics Stuttgart was founded on July 18, 1983 at the instigation of the Baden-Württemberg state government with the participation of the companies Daimler-Benz , IBM , SEL and Siemens as a foundation under public law in Stuttgart. The IMS is one of the first institutes that was founded in Germany in the early 1980s in order to be able to sustainably support domestic industrial companies in the competition for shares in the world microelectronics market, especially with the up-and-coming Japan. During this time there was a real competition between the federal states for locations and for heads for the new microelectronics institutes. In 2003, as with other contract research institutions in the state of Baden-Württemberg, the legal form was converted into a foundation under civil law. The basis for this was the “Law on the Conversion of Public Research Institutions into Foundations under Civil Law”.
Fields of activity
Universal equipment for chip production and nanostructuring
The development and production of microchips, the Institute is following the ISO 9001 quality standard and the manufacturer recognition QC 001002-3 certified . With the extension opened in 2013, the institute now operates two clean rooms with a total area of approx. 1,000 m² and has the equipment to process wafers and manufacture CMOS and bipolar circuits . Wafers can be structured using the classic mask exposure method and also using the electron beam direct writing method.
Focus on electron beam lithography
The institute owns two electron beam recorders from the Jena company Vistec, an SB352HR and, since 2013, a model of the SB4050 type. With these devices, structures smaller than 32 nm can be exposed on appropriately coated silicon wafers and quartz substrates. As a special feature, the second electron beam recorder has an air bearing stage in the vacuum chamber instead of the previously common ball bearing positioning unit. In addition to relatively light silicon wafers, this means that quartz substrates weighing several kilograms can also be positioned with nanometer precision. Such quartz plates serve as the starting material for diffractive optical elements (DOEs) and computer-generated holograms (CGHs).
At the center of a research cooperation with the optics company ZEISS from Oberkochen is the further development of nano-structured optical components that are used in highly complex lithography optics of so-called wafer scanners. Wafer scanners are among the most precise and complex systems in factories for microchip production and expose the circuit structures on semiconductor wafers.
Nanostructuring as a service
Nanostructures are structures in the range of a few nanometers. These can be generated with the methods for microchip production (exposure and etching processes). The application of nanostructures goes far beyond microelectronics. Optical elements made from nanostructured quartz are an important area of application. The possibility of producing such structures extremely precisely, even on large surfaces, enables computer-generated holograms or diffractive optical elements, for example, to be produced. Three-dimensional structures in the nanometer range can also be produced as “stamps” (nano-imprint lithography), which in turn can be used as a tool (replication master) in the production of e.g. B. hard disks (structuring of the magnetic layer on the storage disks) can be used. Another area is the production of large-area silicon membranes with etched-free surfaces (stencil membranes) that are used as “printing templates” for the production of organic electronic circuits (organic electronics). Tarek Zaki from the University of Stuttgart received the IEEE EDS PhD Fellowship Award in 2013 for his work with organic thin film transistors manufactured in this way, which led to a world record in switching speed.
Process development for ultra-thin microchips
For a process for the production of ultra-thin microchips, Prof. Joachim Burghartz received the State Research Award 2009 of the state of Baden-Württemberg, endowed with 100,000 euros. The Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg then financed the ChipFilm project, in which the practical implementation was researched. For his work in ChipFilm, Evangelos Angelopoulos received the 2011 GMM Prize of the VDE / VDI Society from the IMS.
Together with Robert Bosch GmbH, IMS further developed processes for the production of ultra-thin microchips in the ProMikron project funded by the Federal Ministry of Research for use in high-volume production. The process makes it possible to produce defined cavities that are spanned by a silicon membrane . Microelectronic circuits can be implemented on these membranes using conventional manufacturing technology. At the end of processing, the membrane can be peeled off the wafer with a commercially available vacuum gripper. Anchoring points at the edges of the cavity break in a controlled manner and release the ultra-thin chip.
Development and small series production of mixed signal and smart power ASICs
Microchips that are specially developed and produced on behalf of a customer and are usually not available on the market are called ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits). If such chips contain circuits with digital (binary logic, arithmetic units, state machines) and analog functions (amplifiers, analog-digital converters, digital-analog converters), one speaks of mixed-signal ASICs. These are of particular importance in all areas in which sensors for physical quantities or other environmental parameters are used. Sensors usually deliver analog signals that have to be processed with digital technology (filtering, amplification) and converted into digital values for transmission and further processing.
Smart-Power-ASICs, on the other hand, are microchips that are able to control electrical consumers directly and without an upstream power amplifier. They can also be designed so that they can be operated directly at higher voltages. Conventional, highly integrated microchips such as microprocessors are only designed for voltages between one and three volts; higher voltages would destroy the chips. Smart-Power-ASICs, on the other hand, can be operated with voltages of up to several hundred volts and thus allow direct use in many areas of energy technology (battery monitoring in electric vehicles, intelligent electricity meters, photovoltaics), but they are also an important component of modern automation technology in the field of industrial controls that usually work with signals that have 24 volts DC voltage. Ordinary microchips can only be used there with additional effort (level converter, voltage limiter), while smart power ASICs can be used directly, which enables a great deal of simplification and a more efficient construction of industrial controls.
Typical applications for the institute's ASICs or IMS CHIPS are control and regulation technology as well as safety technology. The chips control electric motors, evaluate sensor signals or meter lubricants and transmit data to machines and systems. ASICs from the Institute for Microelectronics Stuttgart can be found in simple infrared remote controls , solenoid valve controls, but also in complex space applications, for example in the German radar satellites TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X.
CMOS image sensors with logarithmizing pixel cells
A special feature CMOS - image sensors after HDRC principle is that CMOS image sensors differ due to logarithmierenden pixel cell by a very high brightness dynamics of conventional. The institute was granted a German patent for the logarithmizing pixel cell in 1996, and the principle was subsequently also patented in the EU, Japan, Canada, the USA and worldwide. In the field of machine vision, the safe camera system SafetyEYE from Pilz GmbH & Co. KG an example of an application of an HDRC sensor. The system observes e.g. B. Danger zones in production halls, as they exist in machines with moving or rotating parts. Up until now, such danger zones, around industrial robots, had to be laboriously secured with barriers, light barriers and light curtains. SafetyEYE, which contains three HDRC image sensors developed at the institute, is a camera-based protection system approved by professional associations. It enables mechanical protective barriers to be dispensed with.
HDRC image sensors from the IMS are also used in the medical technology sector. Eberhart Zrenner implanted such image sensors in several patients' eyes at the University of Tübingen's Eye Clinic . The image sensor is part of the so-called retina implant which is intended to restore part of the eyesight in certain blindness diseases ( retinitis pigmentosa ). To do this, an image sensor converts the image into electrical impulses instead of the retinal cells and stimulates the cells of the optic nerve that are still intact. After some training, the brain can generate a visual impression again from these stimulation patterns.
Further training and promotion of young talent
Since 1992 the institute has offered a two-week summer course "Schoolchildren make chips" every year. The course is aimed at students in the 11th grade (G8) or 12th grade (G9) who have taken physics or mathematics as a profile or specialty subject and have previous knowledge of computer science. In this course, the basics of microelectronics are clearly explained and the development steps for creating electronic circuits are shown. The lectures are given by engineers and scientists from the institute. Accompanying this, the participants assemble their own digital clock as part of a practical laboratory exercise using an ASIC that has the same circuitry as the one developed by the students in the course. This enables them to better understand the various design steps and to work with appropriate software packages. Another focus of the course is assistance in choosing a course of study and career, in which student representatives from student councils at the University of Stuttgart as well as engineers from the electronics industry are available to answer questions from the participants. Surveys among the more than 700 course participants so far showed that two thirds of the participants consider the course to be decisive for their future career choice.
Via the Institute for Nano- and Microelectronic Systems (INES) established at the University of Stuttgart, students and prospective scientists have the opportunity to use the facilities of the IMS and to carry out scientific work up to doctoral studies.
Together with the Technical Academy Esslingen (TAE), the IMS offers an annual “Microelectronics Technology Seminar” certificate course lasting several days.
For participation in the IdeenPark 2008, after technology publishers and providers of experiment kits did not want to take part in the IdeenPark presence, the IMS developed its own robust experiment board and launched it in small numbers, which allows a large number of electronic experiments and at the same time based on conventional ones Test leads with 4 mm banana plugs. Since then, it has been used regularly by school classes visiting the IMS.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.innbw.de/
- ↑ http://www.mzwtg.mwn.tum.de/fileadmin/w00bmt/www/Arbeitspapiere/gall_fhg.pdf
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 1, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from May 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from August 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ ZEISS press release ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved September 10, 2014.
- ↑ http://eds.ieee.org/phd-student-fellowship-program-awards.html
- ↑ Martin Zimmermann, Joachim N. Burghartz, Wolfgang Appel, Nils Remmers, Christian Burwick, Roland Würz, O. Tobail, MB Schubert, Günther Palfinger, JH Werner: A Seamless Ultra-Thin Chip Fabrication and Assembly Process. In: Electron Devices Meeting. 2006, ISBN 1-4244-0439-8 .
- ↑ State Research Prize Baden-Württemberg
- ↑ GMM Prize 2011 . Retrieved September 10, 2014.
- ↑ New technologies for high-volume applications of silicon microsystems (ProMikron) ( Memento of the original from September 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Technical information library u. University library, Kirchheim b. Munich 2010, accessed on September 10, 2014.
- ↑ https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/t/terrasar-x
- ↑ https://depatisnet.dpma.de/DepatisNet/depatisnet?window=1&space=menu&content=treffer&action=pdf&docid=DE000004209536C3
- ↑ https://www.google.com/patents/EP0632930B1
- ↑ http://www.hft-stuttgart.de/Studienbereich/Vermessung/Bachelor-Informationslogistik/Aktuell/Veranstaltungen/inflogtag2014/SafetyEYE_HFT-Stuttgart_09-04-14_genehmigt.pdf
- ↑ Heinz-Gerd Graf, Christine Harendt, Thorsten Engelhardt, Cor Scherjon, Karsten Warkentin, Harald Richter, Joachim N. Burghartz: High Dynamic Range CMOS Imager Technologies for Biomedical Applications. In: IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. 44, No. 1, 2009, doi: 10.1109 / JSSC.2008.2007437 .
- ^ E. Zrenner, R. Wilke, H. Sachs, K. Bartz-Schmidt, F. Gekeler, D. Besch, U. Greppmaier, A. Harscher, T. Peters, G. Wrobel, B. Wilhelm, A. Bruckmann , A. Stett: Visual Sensations Mediated By Subretinal Microelectrode Arrays Implanted Into Blind Retinitis Pigmentosa Patients. In: Proceedings of the 13th Annual Conference of the IFESS. 2008 ( PDF ).
- ↑ http://smc.ims-chips.de/
- ↑ http://www.ines.uni-stuttgart.de/
- ↑ Technical Academy Esslingen
- ↑ http://www.ims-chips.de/home.php?id=a3b12c1de&adm=
- ↑ Ideas Park
- ↑ http://www.ims-chips.de/home.php?id=a3b13c4de&adm=
Coordinates: 48 ° 44 '24.9 " N , 9 ° 5' 41" E