École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland) “The technical quality of the people at Leti is extremely high” said Carlotta Guiducci, Professor of Life Sciences Electronics (EPFL).
“They have large teams of people who are top-notch scientists in microelectronic and nanoelectronic technologies—and this is quite exceptional, even on a worldwide level.” EPFL and Leti have been collaborating for ten years on a variety of projects, including most recently, the European Research Council (ERC) project called Design and Elaboration of Multi-Physics Integrated Nanosystems (DELPHINS), which began in 2009.
The goal of DELPHINS is to build a generic multisensor design platform for embedded multi-gasanalysis-on-chip. A wide range of applications will be impacted by this project, including medicine (recognizing specific diseases), environmental protection (spotting toxic and complex air pollutants), perfume & fragrance, and agribusiness.
Prof. Guiducci and Leti are studying nano-sized sensors, technologies that hold great promise for obtaining the resolution and sensitivity required to quantify specific DNA molecules by means of integrated electronic chips with minimal sample preparation. The partners have already demonstrated that nanowires outperform the sensing performance of standard electronic sensors.
“Leti has technologies at standard levels used in industries,” said Dr. Guiducci. “At the same time they have more forefront technologies, taking things one step forward. For a technological partner, these are very precious assets. Innovation in micro and nanoelectronics needs to be designed and proven in collaboration with partners who own the technology at the state-of-the-art, and at the same time, are driven by a scientific mission
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Télécom Bretagne
(France)From Basic Research to the IoT: '‘Really Good Work and First Application of the Theory’'.
Prof. Claude Berrou from the Graduate School Telecom Bretagne teamed up with Leti researchers on a PhD project that built on the school’s work in artificial neural networks. Their innovation, which enables power efficiency on a small silicon footprint suitable for Internet of Things applications, demonstrated that features of neural clique networks can provide quick, optimal power management in electronic devices.
Prof. Berrou, who previously developed a new family of quasi-optimal error-correction codes called turbo codes, said Leti’s expertise and its emphasis on applications make it a top institute for visiting researchers.
“I am deeply interested in applications for research,” he explained. “Previously in France, technology was not considered important for academic researchers. But this has changed now, and academics are increasingly looking at applied science and technological applications.” Leti shares this vision and opens its doors to scholars interested in putting basic research to work to improve people’s lives.
I’m very pleased with the experience of this project at the scientific level. It was really good work and the first application of the theory,” Prof. Berrou said. “We had several publications, and thanks to these, we proved the importance and the success of our theories.”
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 CNRS Research Laboratoire
des Technologies de la Microélectronique
(France)
"One of the things that makes Leti unique in Europe is that
they have all the facilities you need for performing highlevel
research in nanotechnology and characterization,”
says Thierry Baron, research director of CNRS, and director
of Laboratoire des Technologies de la Microélectronique
(LTM).
LTM was created in 1999, by the Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Université Grenoble
Alpes (UGA), to promote collaboration in nanotechnologies
with Commissariat à l’Énérgie Atomique (CEA). The
partnership between LTM and Leti was strengthened
through collaborative work in the frame of several European
projects and industrial partnerships, on topics like new
etching chemistry, advanced processes for nanomaterials,
self-assembled nanowires, and most recently microfluidics
and nanotechnologies applied to health care.
“With Leti’s 200 mm and 300 mm clean room, research is
done on production tools, using the same facilities that you’d
have in industry,” said Doctor Baron. “Since you use the same
facilities that you’d have in industry, you can tackle the main
challenges of IC and manufacturers’ companies from the
start.” Dr. Baron said, “The technological aspect is huge with
CEA-Leti. The reactivity is very good. They’re always willing
to take things a step further and to move the innovation to
industry. They always look at how to transform research
into products. This is unique in France in this field, and very
rare in the world.”
|  CNRS Research MEP-LAHC Laboratory
(France)
“Leti is very well positioned on a worldwide
level in advanced technologies,” said
Gérard Ghibaudo, CNRS research director
at the Institut de Microélectronique,
Electromagnétisme et Photonique (IMEPLAHC
Laboratory, Grenoble, France).
Leti has been collaborating with IMEP
for more than thirty years on a variety
of European projects, dealing with
miniaturization of nano-devices (including
CMOS and memories) and they have
shared hundreds of PhD students
exploring the most challenging physics and
characterization challenges of these new
devices.
In 2016, Dr. Ghibaudo worked together
with Leti on research around the variability
and reliability of fully depleted silicon on
insulator (FD-SOI) and nanowire devices,
with a special focus on studying defects in
these devices. The technical goals of this
most recent project were to identify the
critical reliability mechanisms of these
key technologies, looking at the impact
of electrical defects on device behavior
and reliability. Statistical models able to
explain and predict the device behavior
were developed, based on advanced
characterization, metrology and physical
considerations.
As a result of this recent research, Leti
and IMEP significant improved metrology
techniques, making it possible to study
devices at near atomic level and to model
both the electrical behavior of the device
and the influence of the process steps
on device performance. New questions
were also raised thanks to this research.
For scaled-down devices, the behavior is
more dispersed, and statistical studies
are mandatory. Those devices operate
at lower voltages, so that new physical
phenomena arise which should be
addressed with greater precision. The
collaborators continue to work together
to address new challenges stemming from miniaturization, new materials
and novel architectures.
Leti has also been collaborating for
several years with Dr. Ghibaudo on
emerging memory concepts. In particular,
the partners have been deepening
their understanding of Resistive RAM
(RRAM) to analyze device performance
and reliability thoroughly, and increase
the maturity of this technology. Dr.
Ghibaudo is a renowned expert on
dielectric reliability and device modeling.
His expertise is helping to clarify the
experimental results obtained on
innovative RRAM processed in Leti’s
cleanroom. A topic addressed by this
collaboration concerns RRAM failure
during cycling. RRAM dielectric
breakdown is identified as the origin
of endurance collapse when a too high
programming voltage is applied. Thus,
to describe this failure, physics of oxide
breakdown was implemented in RRAM
models. This statistical approach allowed
to quantify RRAM reliability at the array
level, a necessary step before technology
industrialization.
“We are very lucky to be associated with
Leti, and to benefit from their advanced
technology and devices,” said Dr. Ghibaudo.
“They have world class expertise in a
number of technologies that go beyond
standard CMOS and the association with
our characterization and physical knowhow
is very successful.”
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