Professor Kyung-Rok Kim's research team at UNIST has developed a ternary semiconductor.
Ternary semiconductors offer the advantages of ultra-low power consumption, high performance, and miniaturization.
| A reverse approach to utilizing leakage current information processing

Semiconductors that use not only 0 and 1 but also 2 are emerging.

A research team led by Professor Kyung-Rok Kim of the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at UNIST (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology) has succeeded in implementing an ultra-low-power 'Ternary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor' on a large-area silicon wafer.

The results of this study were published in the academic journal 'Nature Electronics' on the 15th (UK local time).

The semiconductor industry has been reducing the size of semiconductor devices and increasing integration to create high-performance semiconductors that quickly process large amounts of information, such as those for AI, autonomous driving, and the Internet of Things.

The industry has been working to solve the problem of reducing the time it takes to process information in binary-based semiconductors and reducing power consumption that increases as performance increases.

Ternary semiconductors are attracting attention as a way to solve these problems.

The ternary semiconductor developed by Professor Kim Kyung-rok's research team processes information using the values 0, 1, and 2. Ternary semiconductors require less information to process, resulting in faster calculations and lower power consumption. They also offer advantages in miniaturizing semiconductor chips.

For example, to express the number 128, 8 bits (binary units) are required in binary, but only 5 trits (ternary units) are required to store it in ternary.

Currently, the size of semiconductor devices needs to be reduced to increase integration per unit area, effectively processing the rapidly increasing amount of information. However, miniaturization of these devices exacerbates the quantum mechanical tunneling phenomenon, leading to increased leakage current. Furthermore, this also leads to a significant increase in power consumption.

Professor Kim Kyung-rok's research team is using leakage current, a major cause of rapidly increasing power consumption, to implement information processing in semiconductor devices through a paradigm shift. The team implemented a ternary-based system that processes information based on the amount of leakage current.

Through this research, Professor Kim Kyung-rok's team has raised expectations for commercialization by implementing ternary semiconductors in semiconductor processes currently widely used in industry.

Professor Kim Kyung-rok said, “The results of this research are very significant in that they not only implemented ultra-low-power ternary semiconductor devices and integrated circuit technology using existing binary semiconductor device process technology, but also demonstrated the possibility of commercializing ternary semiconductors by manufacturing them on a large area.” He added, “It will lead the future semiconductor paradigm shift across all areas of process, device, and design for memory and system semiconductors, moving from the existing binary system-centered semiconductor process to the ternary system.”

Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics is verifying the implementation of ternary semiconductors using microfabrication processes at its foundry division's FAB to support Professor Kim Kyung-rok's research team. Samsung Electronics has been supporting this research since September 2017, when it was selected as a Samsung Future Technology Promotion Project theme.