Under a DARPA project, a UF team led by ECE Assistant Professor Dr. Roozbeh Tabrizian is developing novel integrated ferroelectric device technologies to address the urgent need for low-power information storage and high-speed wireless communication in the IoT era. This project is supported by the DARPA Tunable Ferroelectric Nitrides (TUFEN) program that targets exploration and engineering of ferroelectricity in scandium-aluminum-nitride (ScAlN) films for realization of a diverse range of novel integrated device technologies. Benefiting from a CMOS-compatible growth process, large piezoelectric transduction, and the recently discovered ferroelectric behavior, ScAlN films can be integrated with semiconductor electronics to create more than Moore microsystems with enhanced functionalities such as ultra-low-power information storage, sensing and actuation, energy harvesting, and RF spectral processing.
In this project, Tabrizian’s team is following innovative material engineering approaches to scale ferroelectric ScAlN properties for chip-scale applications. In addition, the UF team is creating disruptive configurable RF filter technologies that enable high-performance and adaptive wireless communication systems for the congested spectrum of the connected world.