The Institute for Sensor and Imager Materials and Manufacturing (ISIMM) accelerates the time to innovation by bringing together all aspects of the sensor and imager R&D ecosystem (industry, government, academia, materials and tools) in a collaborative environment. ISIMM’s access to BRIDG’s modern, modular manufacturing fabrication and laboratory facility allows for a wide variety of toolsets and supports various material types in a high-mix/low-volume environment.  This framework allows collaborative R&D programs to advance key areas: design tools, modeling and simulation; fabrication processes; packaging optimization methods to improve sensor functionality and performance; new automated testing tools; reliable modeling and testing. This game-changing technology strategy shortens sensor and imager development time and commercialization cycle by solving common technological challenges that often slow down the cycle when entities must work alone.  BRIDG has established relationships with world class providers, many of which support the goals of ISIMM members. Newly established relationships with Quora Technology, SUSS MicroTec, and PANalytical add value to ISIMM members as they influence this next-generation transformation.  

Quora Technology
One of our newest ISIMM partners, Quora Technology, from Silicon Valley, California, exemplifies that strategy. This partnership will enable high volume manufacturing of Gallium Nitride (GaN) based sensors, Radio Frequency (RF) and power devices. GaN is a relatively new technology in semiconductors and has become the technology of choice for high-RF, power-hungry applications like those required to transmit signals over long distances or at high-end power levels (such as radar, base transceiver stations (BTS), satellite communications, electronic warfare (EW), and others). GaN transistors have only one-tenth the resistance of such silicon-based transistors. This allows for much higher energy-efficiency, and orders-of-magnitude faster switching frequency. Power-electronics systems with these components can be made much smaller with greater capabilities at lower fabrication and energy costs. BRIDG/ISIMM will use Quora Technology’s 8 inch GaN/Si templates to fabricate high performance packaged devices.

Quora will assist other ISIMM members by opening access to a huge set of new markets based on the advantages of leveraging their GaN platform, background IP, and support, which through development will be available to ISIMM members who may need that increment of capability to enter or extend market penetration with medical, manufacturing, automotive, homeland security and environmental applications.

SUSS MicroTec
SUSS MicroTec is partnering with BRIDG/ISIMM to support the 2.5D / 3-D integration program, including establishing a customer demonstration facility at the BRIDG fabrication facility. After an extensive equipment evaluation and analysis, SUSS MicroTec, with offices world-wide, provides one of the most flexible and state-of-the-art 2.5D / 3-D integration toolsets for US-based manufacturing development of future devices and systems. SUSS works with BRIDG/ISIMM to develop next-generation technologies to support system integration for IR, LIDAR and THz imaging applications. The technologies developed will focus on enabling high-density integration of optics and electronics to support future US-based manufacturing lines to lead the “More than Moore” technology race.
 
SUSS will be providing support to a program backed by Harris Corporation, the University of Central Florida, Argonne National Laboratory, DoD/DoE Manufacturing Institutes, and other ISIMM partners. This program focuses on developing a roadmap for 3D circuits that can interconnect one million signals. This leads to advanced miniaturization abilities that will enable smaller, lighter electronic systems with higher bandwidth and higher signal resolution.  This promises to revolutionize today’s imager applications into the next generation of dynamic imagers.

PANalytical
BRIDG/ISIMM collaborated with Massachusetts-based PANalytical to provide solutions for highly reliable and robust chemical and structural analyses of a wide variety of electronic and opto-electronic materials used for manufacturing sensors, detectors, power, and radio frequency (RF) devices. The combination of PANalytical’s software and instrumentation, based on X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray scattering (XRS), X-ray Reflectance (XRR) and X-ray topography (XRT), provides important feedback on structure, defects and interface integrity on small, highly sensitive devices. Performance is directly influenced by the structural quality of materials used and PANalytical’s instrument at BRIDG/ISIMM is a significant and important analytical tool for metrology and quality control, providing important value for ISIMM partners.