Research challenges
Higher voltages
While the nominal supply voltage of scaled CMOS technologies is continuously reducing, the voltage of the mains remains constant. On the contrary, the trend in energy storage is towards higher voltages. For example, electric cars are shifting from 400 V towards 800 V batteries. Additionally, capacitive storage profits quadratically from increasing the voltage (see figure). These trends necessitate power management circuits with increasing conversion ratios to efficiently and reliably step down the energy source's voltage. Inductive converters suffer from extremely low duty cycles for such high conversion ratios. On the contrary, capacitive converters can use a 50% duty cycle clock regardless of the conversion ratio. Additionally, capacitors can be integrated easily. Shifting to higher voltage remains a considerable challenge. Research at MICAS is exploring new possibilities in this domain.
New technologies
Silicon-based bulk CMOS technologies have been the dominating platform for several decades. Although this is probably going to continue in the foreseeable future, some applications profit from other technologies. Recently, many technologies are emerging, for example, monolithic GaN technologies, TFT-based technologies, etc., which combine exciting properties with the integration aspect of traditional CMOS. This allows us to investigate the possibilities of fully integrated capacitive GaN power converters, TFT-based analog circuits, and more. The goal is to leverage our knowledge in CMOS and apply it to these more exotic technologies.
Extreme conditions
Integrated circuits are everywhere today. Sometimes, they are used in so-called extreme conditions: an extremely low or high temperature, a high vacuum, a high radiation environment, an environment with high electromagnetic interference, etc. Realizing proper operation under such extreme conditions requires deep insight into the mechanisms that play and innovative solutions to circumvent them. MICAS is actively involved in research on chips for automotive applications, space applications, high-energy physics, gravitational-wave detectors, etc.
Current research topics
