Gilbert Declerck, IMEC President & CEO

Gilbert J. Declerk (Source: IMEC)

Gilbert J. Declerck, president and CEO of IMEC, received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1972. After graduation, he spent one year at the IC laboratories of Stanford University. He then joined the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1974, where he became a full professor in 1983. In 1984, he moved to IMEC as vice president of the advanced semiconductor processing division. In 1993, he was elected fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for leadership and contributions to MOS device physics, charge-coupled device technology, and VLSI processing techniques. In 1998, Declerck was appointed CEO of IMEC and, since June 1999, he has served as both president and CEO of the organization. Declerck is chairman of the MEDEA+ Scientific Committee and a member of the VRWB (Flanders Scientific Council) and ENIAC Scientific Community Council. IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) is Europe’s leading independent research center in the field of micro- and nanoelectronics and nanotechnology, enabling design methods and technologies for IC systems. Its mission is to perform R&D ahead of industrial needs in microelectronics, nanotechnology, design methods, and technologies for information and communication systems.

SI: IMEC is a major player in nanoelectronics. Can you update us on your efforts in this area?

Declerck: We’re extremely active in advanced CMOS process developments, and deeply involved in the scaling effort. We are closely engaged in the lithography area — immersion litho and EUV — as well as in new materials. We’re working to produce 32 and 20 nm devices, which are extremely challenging and demanding. Reliability issues are very extreme at these architectures. As a sidebar to that, we’re addressing design issues as well. People talk about design for manufacturability; we talk about technology-aware design. Our system design engineers realize that the rules have changed, and they must take into account process restrictions and limitations when doing system design. This is all connected to power, leakage, to threshold situations, reliability, that sort of thing. This was not so much the case for the 90 nm generation. Today, at 45, 32 nm, this is very much the case.

SI: It often seems as if nanoelectronic efforts are directed mostly toward the preservation of planar CMOS instead of at researching viable nanotech alternatives. Is this a legitimate, useful effort or merely an attempt to stave off the inevitable?

Declerck: The trend is toward scaling CMOS; people do speak of nano-CMOS. I think this will continue for another seven, perhaps 10 years. At that time, continuing to use CMOS will become very expensive, with both tools and processing. Nanoelectronic technology is so powerful that there are many things that can be done with it, besides developing fast processors or telecommunication systems; it also provides a bridge to the medical field. We talk about bio nanoconvergence, whereby implementing these electronic capabilities we can build labs-on-a-chip and medical sensor applications. Today, we go to the hospital for a checkup, but tomorrow the hospital will come to the patient through sensors and wireless connections that will send the necessary information to the database.

SI: Everyone seems to agree that we’re approaching the limits of CMOS. What do you think are nanotech’s limits?

Declerck: Nanotech is a very broad area that not only covers electronics, but also chemistry and many other disciplines. At IMEC, we’re focused on the use and application of nanotechnology to electronics. In this area, even quantum effects, which can affect CMOS adversely, can offer advantages; spintronics comes to mind as a promising area. However, we’re still searching for the ideal switch. The fact remains that the CMOS switch is nearly perfect, and replacing it with something else is no simple undertaking.

SI: How do you see the future of Moore’s Law?

Declerck: Moore’s Law no longer focuses on just scaling effects. Many now believe that when scaling stops because of costs (lithography is becoming extremely difficult, especially as we approach the 15 nm region), we then perhaps must develop these systems differently. Thus, Moore’s Law today is focused on how to put more function on the chip while reducing the cost of that function. Before, this has been done through scaling. In the future, perhaps, it’ll be done by changing the way we organize the systems that go on the chip or how those systems link to one another. We now have to think of new ways to design and organize these systems to enable us to reduce the cost per function. So Moore’s Law is being extended into the system design field.

SI: How would you say that the European nanotech effort, as exemplified by IMEC, differs from that in the United States?

Declerck: That is a difficult question to answer. We’re located in Europe, but interact worldwide, so we have American, Taiwanese, Japanese and other countries’ companies that provide support. In that respect, we’re not a typical European technology center. In the United States, you have various initiatives, very good university groups — there’s Sematech, Albany — many centers spread throughout your country. In Europe, we have IMEC, the European Commission, several universities and companies, all trying to establish a vision, plan, project and program.

SI: How does IMEC’s R&D and funding structure work?

Declerck: In 2006, our budget — P&L — will be €231M (~$296.2M). From that, €35M (~$45M) comes from the government, and close to €200M from contract funding — funding from industrial partners or other European programs. This means that government funding is about 16% of the total budget. We will launch a program after listening to potential partners. We first define it and then invite them to join and share part of the cost and IP results.

SI: Are you satisfied with the direction nanotech is taking these days, or do you wish for research to focus on other aspects of it?

Declerck: I would like to see greater efforts in the application of nanotech to the medical field. I have seen brilliant applications where attempts have been made to detect and destroy cancer cells when they are just beginning to develop. There is still much work to be done in this area, and I would like to see it further emphasized.