Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Nano SystemsIt is difficult to imagine life today without a smartphone. Stowed within easy reach in our pockets and bags, these mobile companions are permanently by our sides and give us all the information and services we need to make our lives more convenient and enjoyable, whether we’re at home or on the go. All it takes is a click to immerse ourselves in a favorite playlist – making us feel transported back to last weekend’s gig right there in our living room – or share data in the form of vacation memories with friends and family in just a matter of seconds. Unique entertainment experiences can also be found in mobile gaming, which allows consoles to move away from the home PC and go anywhere, and ultra-fast video streaming for a movie theater atmosphere you can enjoy from the comfort of your sofa. The new 5G mobile network standard and its successor, 6G, will give all of these familiar services better and faster performance – but they are also set to make applications in autonomous driving, networked industrial automation and intelligent robot control a reality. There are certain essential technical foundations that need to be put in place to ensure that the mobile network can expand rapidly. A research team from Saxony in Germany is working together with Fraunhofer ENAS to achieve this. In the “KoVoPack” project, the researchers are laying the foundations for smart technologies that will soon allow users to benefit from higher maximum speeds, shorter response times and even more networking opportunities.
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Faster, more powerful, more interconnected: KoVoPack project heralds a new era for mobile networks
“In the ´KoVoPack´ project, we are working with our partners and using new processes, technologies and systems to develop a complete technology platform that can be used as an efficient, inexpensive way of creating fully integrated electronic systems known as ´System-in-Package´ (SiP) solutions. This means we are also doing important groundwork for creating state-of-the-art communication and entertainment experiences – with the help of 5G and 6G mobile networks,” says Dirk Wünsch, head of the “Wafer Bonding and Integration Technologies” group and project manager at Fraunhofer ENAS, explaining the aims of the project.
Together with research partners from science and industry, the Chemnitz-based Fraunhofer institute is part of this three-year project that will mark a significant step forward in the development of the new mobile network standard. Also involved are semiconductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies Dresden AG & Co. KG, vacuum processing technology expert VON ARDENNE GmbH, microchip manufacturer SAW COMPONENTS Dresden GmbH and Chemnitz University of Technology. The project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and co-financed from tax revenues on the basis of the budget adopted by the Saxon State Parliament.
Focus on increasing miniaturization
Dirk Wünsch explains: “The project concept is fueled by the desire to make modern technical equipment increasingly smaller and slimmer, but with more and more refinements added and functions packed into it. As technical products become progressively more miniaturized, the microelectronic components and systems installed in them also have to be made smaller all the time. To help them become even smaller, slimmer and more compact in the future, making them suitable for optical, radio and radar applications – and therefore suited for 5G and 6G applications – we need sophisticated technologies, material concepts and methods of construction and bonding.”
Requirements for huge storage capacities
With this in mind, the “KoVoPack” project is setting out to develop new processes, technologies and systems for phase change materials (PCM), for example, on the basis of the semiconductor material germanium antimony telluride (GeSbTe) in order to produce high-frequency switches and optical components. In the past, phase change materials were primarily used in rewritable Blu-ray discs. When exposed to thermal effects, they can change their structure between crystalline and amorphous states, in turn altering their electrical and optical properties. This makes PCMs suitable for manufacturing photonic and electronic components used in display and storage technologies, for example. These properties could give rise to a new generation of smartphones featuring exceptional energy efficiency, more storage requirements, longer-lasting batteries, a longer service life and higher-resolution displays. PCMs could also be used as a basis for creating RF switches for use in antennas and antenna tuners, leading to improved signal transmission and quality, and optimizing mobile network coverage as a result. Not only that, but PCMs also serve as enabler technologies for integrated photonics and make it possible to create modulators, tunable resonators, photonic storage equipment and optical filters that work entirely without moving components. Deployed in photonic neuromorphic computing, these technologies could make computers used in artificial intelligence applications much faster and more energy-saving in the future.
Within the project, Fraunhofer ENAS will develop separation processes based on physical vapor deposition (PVD) for phase change materials, research structuring methods and characterize the materials that are created using analytical methods with the aim of incorporating them into future component concepts.
Accelerated data transmission and new control concepts
Small, slim electronic modules for 5G and 6G applications require wafer-level packaging that is much more compact and, crucially, hermetically sealed so that it is protected from moisture ingress and is able to maintain its performance. As part of the “KoVoPack” project, Fraunhofer ENAS will help achieve this by contributing its many years of proven expertise in wafer bonding technologies involving various substrates. The aim here is to create novel wafer bonding techniques for wafer-level packaging using silicon-based bipolar CMOS (BiCMOS) wafer, plus compact solutions for hermetic encapsulation and electrical contact.
The construction and bonding techniques being developed in the project will help to create efficient high-frequency modules, for example. With the introduction of 5G and the next stage of development, 6G, giving rise to entirely new applications in Industry 4.0 and autonomous driving, which will require much larger quantities of data to be transmitted at higher speeds, more powerful high-frequency modules will make it possible to transmit huge data batches in even less time than before. Emerging construction and bonding techniques are also an intriguing prospect for radar-supported gesture recognition sensors. With highly sensitive sensors, for example, users will be able to control their state-of-the-art smartphones intelligently with subtle movements that require no physical contact whatsoever.
The technologies and processes developed in the “KoVoPack” project will clear a key hurdle for creating new components for 5G and 6G applications in industrial manufacturing. In turn, this will pave the way for new communication standards being introduced and penetrating the market.