Oxygen Layer May Extend Moore's Law

In CMOS, boosting performance sans-scaling

R. Colin Johnson, EETimes
10/19/2016 00:00 AM EDT

LAKE WALES, Fla. — Moore's Law could be extended again sans scaling, according to Robert Mears. Mears invented the Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) — the first commercial and still popular method of amplifying optical signals without having to convert them into electrical signals (and back again). Now Mears believes he has invented an equally industry-changing technology for CMOS called the Mears Silicon Technology (MST) at Atomera Inc. (Los Gatos, Calif., originally Nanovis LLC).

"At Atomera our vision was how to structure silicon so it had electrical properties that would allow it to work with other types of materials. It was created in computer simulations, then realized on wafers," Mears told EE Times. "Our whole purpose at first was to boost electron- and hole-mobility simultaneously, but then we discovered all these other advantages that went along with it."

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