Development of the World's Fastest Semiconductor Electronic Device ... Professor Kim Daehyun's Team at Kyungpook National University Presents in the USA

Professor Kim Daehyun, Department of Electronic Engineering, Kyungpook National University.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Koo Dae-sun] Researchers at Kyungpook National University have developed a next-generation semiconductor electronic device with the world's best ultra-high frequency characteristics applicable to 6G next-generation mobile communication systems.

On the 8th, Kyungpook National University announced that Professor Kim Dae-hyun of the Department of Electronic Engineering and Park Wan-su, a student in the integrated master's and doctoral program, developed a high-electron-mobility transistor semiconductor electronic device with world-class frequency characteristics through joint research with the domestic mid-sized company QSI and researchers from Japan's NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation).

The research results were presented on the 6th (local time) at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held in San Francisco, USA. IEDM is one of the world's top three semiconductor academic conferences. In particular, Professor Kim's team’s research was selected as one of the 16 notable research achievements among the 250 papers presented at this year's IEDM.

The semiconductor electronic device developed by Professor Kim's team has a cutoff frequency (fT) of 0.75 THz, which determines the digital operation speed, and a maximum oscillation frequency (fmax) of 1.1 THz, which determines the operating frequency band of analog and digital systems.

This is the fastest speed among semiconductor electronic devices announced to date. Last year, Professor Kim Dae-hyun announced at IEDM the development of a high-electron-mobility transistor electronic device with a gate length of 30 nm, featuring a cutoff frequency (fT) of 706 GHz and a maximum oscillation frequency (fmax) of 962 GHz, which were the highest operation speeds at that time.

Professor Kim Dae-hyun, the principal investigator, said, “The future core semiconductor fields can be broadly summarized into two areas: artificial intelligence semiconductors and semiconductors for 6G mobile communications. This research achievement is expected to be a core source technology for high performance, high efficiency, and multifunctionalization of next-generation 6G mobile communication semiconductor systems, which are anticipated to be implemented in the sub-terahertz band.”

He added, “Researchers from Kyungpook National University and QSI recently verified the world-class low-noise characteristics of this research achievement with a Swedish demand company by applying it to the Eurostars project supported by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the European Union. It is also expected to be widely used as a key material and component that promotes the activation of quantum computing, which is expected to see explosive research and development in the future.”

This research was conducted with support from the Samsung Future Technology Development Project and the Ministry of Science and ICT's Next-Generation Compound Semiconductor Core Technology Development Project.