MST-SP Technology Provides Significant Cost Reduction for These Semiconductor Products

Atomera Incorporated (NASDAQ:ATOM), a semiconductor materials and technology licensing company, today announced the availability of its Mears Silicon Technology® Smart Profile™ (MST-SP®) technology. MST-SP, an implementation of MST designed for use on 5V power and analog electronics, is breathing new life into Moore’s Law. Through a combination of atomic level engineering and advanced material science, Atomera is squeezing more capability and capacity out of today’s semiconductor processes. The resulting improvements in power, performance and area (PPA) — the standard measure of Moore’s Law — are effectively enabling the industry to get smaller die size using the same process node.

While digital chip technologies have benefitted greatly from Moore’s Law, there is a significant market for Bipolar CMOS-DMOS (BCD) semiconductors that are built today in legacy nodes ranging from 40nm to 180nm. According to The McClean Report from IC Insights, the major user of BCD processes is the Power Management ICs (PMICs) sector, which had a market size of $14.6 billion in 2020 and is forecast to grow to $24.9 billion in 2025. The growth can be attributed to the projected increase in mobile and other devices that use sophisticated power management techniques. For example, according to Hui He, an analyst at research firm Omdia, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, “A typical 5G smartphone can hold as many as eight power-management chips, compared with two to three in a 4G phone.”

“I have worked in the analog and power device sector for a long time and have witnessed firsthand the challenges to scaling these devices compared to digital,” said Lou Hutter, principal at Lou Hutter Consulting. “Combining this ‘scaling gap’ with the increasing prevalence of these devices is certainly one of the factors behind industry shortages we see in these devices. Atomera’s MST-SP technology can significantly shrink the power transistors that routinely occupy 40%-80% of the area in a PMIC, which enables manufacturers to get 20% more die per wafer — and with lower power consumption to boot.”

BCD technologies face more difficult scaling challenges than their digital counterparts and as a result have not seen the process node advances that digital chips have. While some market leaders have introduced advanced BCD processes at the 40nm nodes, most BCD devices are produced at older-generation process nodes. MST-SP enables BCD PMIC manufacturers to get up to 20% more die per wafer, enabling manufacturers to improve the profitability of existing fabs and/or improve the return on their investments in new processes and capacity.

“As PMICs continue to proliferate in everything that has a battery or a USB connector, the cost and area of the PMIC device is becoming a major challenge for OEMs,” said Scott Bibaud, president and CEO, Atomera. “MST-SP improves performance which will keep costs manageable while enabling OEMs to include ever-more sophisticated power management techniques to extend battery life. MST-SP is just one example of the PPA benefits made possible from the 20 years of work Atomera has put into researching advanced materials using atomic-level engineering.”

The challenge limiting the ability to transition BCD power devices to smaller nodes has been sufficiently improving the on-resistance for a given breakdown voltage while ensuring reliability isn’t compromised. MST-SP provides two fundamental benefits. One is on-state mobility, or higher Idlin, and the second is an ability to control the doping with a degree of precision that is not possible with other approaches. The doping benefits also translate into improvements in the breakdown voltage as well as the overall ability to scale the gate length lower without losing breakdown voltage. The net effect is a 20% improvement in Idlin for a given VDS max, a key reliability parameter for the lifetime of the device.

The ability to scale the gate length while maintaining reliability also addresses the key challenge in moving BCD power devices to smaller nodes. By enabling a gate length shrink without compromising the reliability of the power device, manufacturers can take better advantage of a design rule shrink to reduce the overall device pitch. For 5V PMIC this enables up to 20% more die per wafer.

MST-SP is currently available to license for 5V power devices, which is the predominant operating voltage for BCD PMIC devices today. MST-SP can be customized to both higher- and lower-voltages by Atomera’s engineering team.

About Atomera

Atomera Incorporated is a semiconductor materials and technology licensing company focused on deploying its proprietary, silicon-proven technology into the semiconductor industry. Atomera has developed Mears Silicon Technology™ (MST®), which increases performance and power efficiency in semiconductor transistors. MST can be implemented using equipment already deployed in semiconductor manufacturing facilities and is complementary to other nano-scaling technologies in the semiconductor industry roadmap. More information can be found at www.atomera.com.

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