Crafting tomorrow's chips

BYLINE: Kirk Ladendorf AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Sanjay Banerjee has confronted plenty of tough problems in his research career, but the latest one is something special.

The veteran University of Texas microelectronics researcher is playing a key role in a national project to develop fundamental technology for making microchips.

The stakes in the game are tremendous. The results of the research effort, called the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative, could change the foundations of the semiconductor industry, a cornerstone of the multitrillion-dollar global electronics industry.

If experts such as Banerjee are right, the semiconductor industry needs to find a new basic method to design and build its products.

Even though the current technology probably has another 15 years of progress left, that's barely enough time to find a replacement technology and do all the tough engineering and development work necessary to make it a useful tool for an industry that makes billions of chips every year.

Banerjee will be part of a team of about four dozen academic researchers, supported by government and industry money. But he will be heading one of the project's three main research centers: the new Austin-based South West Academy of Nanoelectronics, or SWAN, which will be backed by $35 million in funding for the next several years.

Austin, already the home of the Sematech industry consortium, will be one of the main centers of action for the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative. The other research centers for the project are in Berkeley, Calif., and Albany, N.Y.

SWAN didn't happen by accident. The UT-based research center is part of a broad effort by Gov. Rick Perry, chip maker Texas Instruments Inc., the University of Texas Board of Regents and several economic development activists who want to make Texas a bigger player in a wide range of nanosciences.

The effort, called the Texas Alliance for Nanoelectronics, proposes to build a network of universities, research organizations and technology companies focused on attracting more world-class nanoscience researchers, tech-related companies and jobs. Supporters of the effort say they will seek state and federal funding.

"SWAN is a huge opportunity for the state, but it is also a piece of the puzzle in a broader vision," said Phil Wilson, deputy chief of staff for Perry.

The idea, he said, is to create a virtual network of Texas schools and laboratories involved in emerging fields related to nanosciences and to bring new talent to the existing base. With that effort, Wilson expects Texas to compete more effectively for federal research dollars and private investment in emerging technology companies.

What's probably in it for Austin is an influx of research talent to UT and, some years in the future, the growth and development of a flock of promising nanotechnology startups.

Nanotechnology involves the creation of very small structures and materials for a wide range of industrial, chemical, biological and electronics uses.

The industry is turning to academic researchers on key far-ranging projects because most of the big corporate-backed research programs have withered over the past two decades.

That's why several chip industry giants have created the national program that includes Banerjee's center.

Supporting brilliant academic scientists "is really our best hope for making some of the research breakthroughs we are talking about," said Bob Doering, director of technology strategy for Texas Instruments.

Nurtured talent

Banerjee, a research star at UT for almost two decades, has been director of the Microelectronics Research Center at the J.J. Pickle Research Campus in North Austin since 1999.

He came to the U.S. as a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after getting his bachelor's degree at one of India's top technical institutes.

At Illinois, he was the last doctoral student of engineering professor Ben Streetman, who left Illinois for a top research job at UT in the early 1980s.

Streetman, now dean of the College of Engineering at UT, has been Banerjee's longtime mentor and collaborator.

Banerjee followed Streetman to UT in 1987, after a four-year research stint at Texas Instruments.

Banerjee says one of his talents as a research manager is spotting talent among grad students and collaborators. That's a skill he put into practice as he recruited his "dream team" of scientists over the summer.

He drew them from six schools other than UT: Rice University, Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at Dallas, Arizona State University, Notre Dame University and the University of Maryland.

The initial team has six electrical engineering researchers, five physicists, two materials scientists and one researcher in electrical engineering and chemistry. The team is expected to grow to about 25 researchers.

In the early months of research, the scientists are expected to work on their own. As research progresses, much of the laboratory experimentation is expected to take place at UT's Microelectronics Research Center.

Different avenues

Researchers will be given the chance to explore different technical avenues during the first few years of the project. Then the list will be narrowed, and work will focus on developing the most promising approaches.

The SWAN research could go on for a decade, but the first three years will be vital.

"The ball is in my court now," Banerjee said. "We had better deliver in the next three years. We don't have a lot of time."

Jeff Welser, the IBM Corp. researcher named director of the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative last summer, says Austin was a natural to serve as a main research center.

"UT has a great (chip) fabrication infrastructure already at the Microelectronics Research Center. They have great relationships with all the companies that are here doing their stuff, and that is what you look for."

To Welser, putting together a diverse set of brilliant minds to tackle a tough technological challenge is energizing.

"It is fun to be on the cutting edge of something that is kind of a Herculean effort. We are going to try to find a new device to replace CMOS," he said, referring to the basic transistor technology in microchips. "Who knows if it is going to be successful, but I have no doubt that the effort is going to be useful.

"To talk to physicists and chemists and see their far-out ideas . . . the interplay back and forth is really exciting. That is how discoveries happen and how science and engineering go forward."

kladendorf@statesman.com; 445-3622

(BOX)

Sanjay Banerjee

Job: Director, Microelectronics Research Center, University of Texas

Age: 49

New assignment: Director of the South West Academy of Nanoelectronics

Career: Electrical engineering professor and researcher at UT since 1987. Staff researcher at Texas Instruments Inc., 1983-87

Education: Bachelor's degree in electronics from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, India, 1979. Doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1983. Grew up primarily in Sudan and Bhutan; his father worked for the Indian Foreign Service.

Family: He and his wife, Jaba, have two sons.