Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have joined the Joint University Microelectronics Program 2.0 (JUMP 2.0) led by the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The public-private partnership will create a massive national research network aimed at advancing new microelectronic discoveries and technologies. The total investment exceeds $250 million and involves dozens of collaborating universities.

The consortium will pursue high-risk, high-payoff research spanning seven thematically structured centers. Each multidisciplinary center will focus on one overarching research theme identified as key to addressing emerging technical challenges. These defined interests, spurred by an increasingly connected world and a rapidly changing microelectronics landscape, will centralize long-term, pathfinding research aimed at breakthroughs applicable across defense and academia.

Daniel Gall, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at RPI, will lead research on new materials for future interconnects as part of the Superior Energy-Efficient Materials and Devices (SUPREME) center led by Cornell University. SUPREME will apply basic materials science to develop new device architecture. The center has $34 million in funding, which is shared across 14 partner universities — Cornell; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Boise State University; Georgia Institute of Technology; North Carolina State University; Northwestern University; RPI; Rochester Institute of Technology; Stanford University; Yale University; the University of Colorado, Boulder; the University of Texas, Austin; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and the University of Notre Dame.

SUPREME has four interdisciplinary subthemes: digital and analog; memory and applications; interconnects and metrology; and materials discovery and processing. The first theme is to control the properties of two-dimensional materials, wide and ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors, ferroelectrics, spin, and molecular materials. The second focuses on creating new approaches to embedded and neuromorphic memory and storage technologies. The third theme is understanding the physics of electron transport, and engineering interconnects for device-device and die-die connections. The fourth is to develop the new materials and processing technologies required to support the above-mentioned technologies.

Professor Gall is a world-known expert on interconnect materials and nanoscale electron transport. His research focuses on developing an atomistic understanding of thin film growth and materials’ electronic and optical properties. He studies electron transport in nanowires and epitaxial metal layers and explores the synthesis and properties of new transition-metal nitrides, including atomistic processes of layer growth and mechanical, tribological, and optoelectronic properties.