Swedish Research in Microelectronics

S w e d i s h F o u n d at i o n f o r s t r at e g i c r e s e a r c h 

 

Swedish Research in Microelectronics 

- an evaluation 2008 

Conducted by 

the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research - SSF 

the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems - VINNOVA 

and the Swedish Research Council - VR 

SSF-rapport nr 2 • ISSN 1654-9872 • ISBN 978-91-89206-41-0

International Evaluation of Swedish Research in Microelectronics 

Graphic production: Hans Melcherson, Tryckfaktorn AB 

Printed by: Alfa print AB, 2008

International Evaluation 

of Swedish Research in 

Microelectronics

International Evaluation of Swedish Research in Microelectronics

Contents 

1 Introduction 7 

2 Evaluation 11 

3 The Evaluation Panel’s Recommendations and Comments 13 

4 Summary of Assessments 15 

5 Assessments of Research Areas 17 

Appendix 1: List of evaluated project leaders and rapporteurs 29 

Appendix 2: Outline of Background Report 32 

Appendix 3: Executive summaries 33 

Appendix 4: Assessment criteria 40 

Appendix 5: Financial support from VR, SSF and VINNOVA (2003-2007) 41 

Appendix 6: Background of experts 47 

Appendix 7: Abbreviations and acronyms 54

International Evaluation of Swedish Research in Microelectronics

Introduction 

 

1 Introduction 

In early 2007, the Swedish Foundation 

for Strategic Research (SSF) proposed 

conducting an evaluation of Swedish academic 

research in microelectronics, 

including photonics and relevant nanoand 

materials science-related projects 

and programmes, jointly together with 

the Swedish Research Council (VR) and 

the Swedish Governmental Agency for 

Innovation Systems (VINNOVA) – the 

first comprehensive evaluation of this 

research field in Sweden. It was decided 

that the evaluation should include 

research activities conducted at a 

Swedish institution of higher education 

from 2003 to 2007. Applied research 

and contract research which is mainly 

carried out at research institutes and 

generally not part of the funded programmes 

within the three above mentioned 

organisations were not considered 

to be included in the present 

evaluation. 

The three funding bodies agreed in 

May 2007 to appoint a panel of prominent 

international experts with the capacity 

to assess the research activities 

under evaluation in an international perspective 

without being influenced by 

considerations at a national level. The 

appointed Panel members were: 

Professor Bob Brodersen, University of 

California, Berkeley, USA 

Professor Stephen Forrest 1 University of 

Michigan, USA 

Professor Qiuting Huang, ETH, Zurich, 

Switzerland 

Professor Mikko Paalanen, Helsinki 

University of Technology, Finland 

Professor Klaus Petermann, Technical 

University, Berlin, Germany 

1 

Shortly before the Panel started their work, Professor 

Stephen Forrest informed the organisers 

that due to unexpected circumstances he was unable 

to participate in the evaluation. To compensate 

for the absence of Professor Forrest two remote 

evaluators, Professor Markus V. Pessa 

(Tampere University of Technology, Finland) and 

Professor Palle Jeppesen (Technical University of 

Denmark), were therefore appointed. 

Professor Krishna Saraswat, Stanford 

University, USA 

Professor Clivia Sotomayor Torres, 

The Catalan Institute of Research 

and Advanced Studies, Barcelona, 

Spain 

Professor Franz Tegude, University of 

Duisburg-Essen, Germany 

Professor Ingemar Lundström, Linköping 

University, was appointed to chair the 

Panel but was not actively involved in 

the evaluation. 

The present document reports the 

findings and recommendations of the 

evaluation Panel. The outline of the report 

is as follows: the next chapter provides 

details about the purpose of the 

evaluation and the evaluation procedure. 

The Panel’s general recommendations 

and comments are listed in chapter 

3. Chapter 4 gives a summary of the 

assessments made by the Panel. Finally, 

chapter 5 contains detailed assessments 

and specific recommendations 

Panel members, from left: Klaus Petermann, Mikko Paalanen, Bob Brodersen, Clivia Sotomayor Torres, Franz Tegude, Qiuting Huang and Krishna Saraswat.

International Evaluation of of Swedish Research in in Microelectronics 

on the evaluated research areas and 

entities. The first draft of the evaluation 

report was produced while the Panel 

was assembled in Stockholm. The text 

has since only been subject to minor 

editing and therefore reflects the original 

text written by the evaluation Panel 

The planning and organisation of the 

entire evaluation process and preparation 

of the outline for the final report 

was carried out by a joint committee 

which consisted of David Edvardsson 

and Jonas Björck (VR), Sven-Ingmar 

Ragnarsson (VINNOVA) and Anders 

Sjölund (SSF). 

On behalf of the three funding bodies 

the undersigned hereby express our 

deepest gratitude to the participating 

researchers, to the expert Panel for 

conducting the evaluation and also for 

its support in the preparatory stages of 

the project, and to the local organising 

committee. 

Stockholm, May 2008 

Lars Rask Arne Johansson Jonas Wallberg 

Swedish Foundation for Swedish Research Council VINNOVA 

Strategic Research 

Natural and Engineering Sciences

Introduction 

 

To 

The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, 

The Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems and 

The Swedish Research Council 

At the request of the above-mentioned organisations, we have evaluated the Swedish research in Microelectronics. 

We take full responsibility for the scientific judgements and the recommendations given in the report. 

Stockholm, April 2008 

Prof. Bob Brodersen Prof. Qiuting Huang Prof. Mikko Paalanen Prof. Klaus Petermann 

Prof. Krishna Saraswat Prof. Clivia Sotomayor Torres Prof. Franz Tegude

10 International Evaluation of Swedish Research in Microelectronics

Evaluation 

11 

2 Evaluation 

2.1 Purpose of the Evaluation 

The main purposes of the evaluation 

were to inform VR, VINNOVA and SSF 

about the quality of Swedish microelectronics 

research as seen in an international 

perspective, to provide an overall 

picture of Swedish research in microelectronics, 

and to provide recommendations 

for future research funding programmes. 

Specifically, the three funding 

bodies expected advice from the expert 

Panel regarding: 

• the absolute scientific level and industrial 

relevance of Swedish academic 

research in microelectronics 

• which subareas within microelectronics 

are particularly weak or 

strong in an international perspective 

or of high or low industrial relevance 

• the scientific level of different research 

environments 

• perceived problems and general observations 

regarding the Swedish 

microelectronic research system 

and recommendations on what 

steps should be taken to improve 

this system. 

The organising partners recognise that 

it is not an easy task to do a simultaneous 

evaluation of bottom-up basic research 

conducted under VR auspices 

and of large research programmes supported 

by VINNOVA or SSF. Although 

SSF, VR and VINNOVA together represent 

the main Swedish public funding 

bodies for research in microelectronics, 

they have different central roles. VR is 

responsible for funding and developing 

basic research in all academic disciplines 

with an emphasis on achieving 

the highest scientific quality and bringing 

about development and renewal. 

SSF finances basic research as well as 

applied research, provided the research 

activities are of excellent scientific quality, 

while at the same time contributing 

to the enhancement of Sweden’s longterm 

competitiveness. VINNOVA’s particular 

sphere of responsibility is needsoriented 

research linked to the main 

industrial sectors, normally co-funded 

by industry, and the development of the 

Swedish innovation system. VINNOVA 

judges project proposals both by expected 

contribution to economic growth 

and by scientific quality. 

The above-mentioned differences 

are often reflected in how evaluations of 

funded research activities are normally 

performed within each funding organisation. 

The Swedish Research Council and 

its predecessors have a tradition of 

conducting evaluations of entire scientific 

fields. By contrast, VINNOVA and 

SSF mainly conduct evaluations at the 

programme level primarily of specific efforts 

such as VINNOVA’s Competence 

Centres and SSF’s comprehensive programmes 

and Strategic Research Centres. 

Since several research groups in 

the field of microelectronics obtain 

funding from at least two, and sometimes 

all three bodies, apart from other 

more scattered national sources and 

from international sources, the types of 

grants and the level of financing differ 

significantly and make the picture of individual 

project leaders (principal investigators) 

quite complex. It was therefore 

thought that a comprehensive evaluation 

of the field of microelectronics, 

rather than an evaluation of individual 

project leaders, would result in a better 

overall view. 

2.2 Evaluation Process 

Each research project or research programme 

supported by VR, VINNOVA and 

SSF has a principal project leader with 

overall responsibility for the project or 

the programme. For the purpose of the 

present evaluation, the selection of 

which project leaders to include was 

based on fulfilment of the two following 

criteria: 

• Project leaders should have received 

grants from one or more of the funding 

bodies (the total sum should be 

at least SEK 1 million) for research 

conducted during the period 2003 

to 2007. 

• The year of first payment had to be 

no later than 2005. 

Based on these criteria, 111 project 

leaders were identified for inclusion in 

the evaluation. They are listed in Appendix 

1. 

Subsequently, 24 reporting entities 

were defined. The reporting entities comprised 

one or several researchers working 

with similar research topics. Each reporting 

entity had a rapporteur 

responsible for submitting a background 

report (see Appendix 2 for an outline of 

the background reports) of his/her entity 

including, an executive summary (Appendix 

3) and reports from each project 

leader in the respective entity.

12 

International Evaluation of Swedish Research in Microelectronics 

In order to further facilitate the evaluation 

of the field of microelectronics, 

six research sub-areas were identified 

by the three funding bodies and each 

reporting entity was assigned to one of 

these areas. These sub-areas were: 

• Silicon and Wide Bandgap Components 

• High Speed Electronics 

• Nanoelectronics 

• Organic Electronics 

• Photonics 

• System Design 

The selected project leaders received a 

first letter of invitation in June 2007 

with information on the evaluation and 

the inclusion criteria and a brief description 

of the evaluation process. At about 

the same time, the expert Panel received 

detailed guidelines for the evaluation 

procedure. It was stressed at an 

early stage that the evaluation should 

focus on research in the six different 

sub-areas with comments on individual 

reporting entities rather than on individual 

project leaders. 

The actual evaluation was based on 

the background material provided by 

the rapporteur and project leaders and 

information gathered at a hearing during 

the Panel’s visit to Sweden. The 

background reports were collected using 

a web-based system during the period 

December 2007 to March 2008. 

Prior to the assembly of the Panel in 

Stockholm, the evaluators were given 

access to the background reports using 

the web-based system and provided 

preliminary assessments of the reporting 

entities. These preliminary assessments 

and comments served as working 

material and provided initial input 

for the evaluation. To distribute the 

work among the members of the Panel, 

one member of the Panel was appointed 

as the main reviewer and another 

member as the second reviewer for one 

specific research sub-area. The main 

reviewer was responsible for writing and 

summarising the assessments made by 

the whole Panel of the research within 

the sub-area. 

Individual rapporteurs and project 

leaders were invited to the Panel hearing 

at the Swedish Research Council between 

April 7 and 11, 2008. Since the 

evaluation focused on research within 

the different reporting entities and subareas 

rather than on individual project 

leaders, only a limited number of persons 

were invited to the hearings. For 

the same reason, it was not considered 

feasible to conduct site visits. Each rapporteur 

was allowed to invite one to 

three additional project leaders to the 

hearings depending on the size of the 

reporting entity. During the hearing, 

each rapporteur was given 10 minutes 

to present an overview of the research 

under his/her reporting entity. The Panel 

then decided on how to use the remaining 

35 minutes allocated for each 

session. Apart from the presentations 

and direct questions to rapporteurs and 

project leaders, all sessions included 

general discussions of the Swedish research 

system, area(s) concerned in order 

to identify future needs in, and opportunities 

for Swedish research in 

microelectronics. 

Research activities were evaluated 

with regard to their scientific quality in 

an international context and their strategic 

relevance for Sweden’s long-term 

competiveness. Scientific quality was 

judged according to a five-point scale 

and relevance according to a four-point 

scale (Appendix 4).

The Evaluation Panel’s Recommendations and Comments 

13 

3 The Evaluation Panel’s 

Recommendations and 

Comments 

3.1 Program structure 

The Swedish microelectronics research 

is funded by all three agencies. However, 

one of the funding agencies, SSF, 

is presently covering a large portion of 

the research budgets in this area. This 

is an unbalanced situation and it is the 

opinion of the Panel that this should be 

changed. The Panel recommends joint 

or coordinated calls for the three funding 

agencies. The calls should cover the 

full spectrum of microelectronics studies 

from materials, components and circuits 

to simulations and software research. 

The calls should be open to 

both single- and multi-discipline project 

proposals. The selection criteria should 

include both scientific excellence and 

strategic relevance. 

Thematic calls for research proposals 

over well-defined periods of time are 

very useful for setting strategic directions 

for Swedish research and focusing 

resources on acknowledged areas of 

importance. These calls should, however, 

be complemented by grants that 

can be awarded in response to fresh 

and innovative ideas spontaneously. It 

is the opinion of the Panel that it should 

be possible for researchers with exciting 

ideas outside the established wisdom 

to formulate a white paper and 

submit it to one of the funding agencies 

without having to fit to a predefined call 

in terms of timing and theme. Such a 

regular fund at the agencies’ discretion 

may encourage innovation and nurture 

unexpected breakthroughs. 

The Panel regards the present definition 

of microelectronics research as 

too broad in Sweden. The present definition 

makes it difficult to make funding 

decision within the same program. 

When nanoscience matures and relevance 

becomes more important in funding 

decisions, one should separate the 

research projects with medium- and 

long-term relevance into different funding 

programs. In case of nanoelectronics, 

this means keeping the projects 

aiming towards hybrid technologies 

within microelectronics and transferring 

projects with long-term relevance into 

the basket of basic science projects. 

The Panel found that there is a quite 

large cultural gap between academic and 

industrial research groups. ACREO was 

seen as an excellent example to facilitate 

and ensure technology transfer. 

The Panel would like to encourage 

interdisciplinary teams of researchers 

from science and engineering. This is to 

facilitate relevant research and because 

individual researchers may not be capable 

of realizing all the boundary conditions 

for moving basic ideas up the 

chain for fruition. Increasingly it is seen 

internationally that the best results in 

research resulting in industrial applications 

are achieved by interdisciplinary 

teams comprising of researchers from 

diverse areas. 

Since advanced semiconductor 

manufacturing is no longer present in 

Sweden it is particularly important that 

access to state-of-the-art silicon CMOS 

(see Appendix 7 for a list of abbreviations 

and acronyms) technology is available 

to researchers involved in system 

design. This is being accomplished now 

through foundry access being made 

available through Europractice and Circuits 

Multi-Projets. The cost of this will 

increase in the future, so it will become 

an increasing limit on the research if 

separate funding is not made. 

3.2 Human resources 

The Panel noticed that there is an under-representation 

of women scientists 

and engineers in Swedish microelectronics 

and the opinion of the Panel is 

that this constitutes an untapped pool 

of expertise. 

Senior staff (professors) should 

have personal salary of at least 75% 

paid by their institutions. Many professors 

are expected to externally fund a 

large proportion of their salaries which 

severely reduces competitiveness and 

drives the faculty towards potential conflict 

of interest as they must continually 

be concerned with providing their own 

salary. Also, if salaries are paid by the 

institutions, then sabbaticals will be 

possible which would have substantial 

benefit to expanding the exposure of 

faculty to outside research. If this salary 

proposal is not possible, then at 

least overhead should not be charged 

against the salary that the faculty rais-

14 International Evaluation of Swedish Research in Microelectronics 

es. This overhead policy in effect results 

in a double penalty (requiring the 

faculty to raise most of their own salary, 

as well as paying overhead on it) that 

faculty in most other countries do not 

incur. 

It was noticed by the Panel that a 

large proportion of academics were internally 

promoted to positions in microelectronics 

at their own University. The 

Panel suggests that consideration is 

given to encourage external appointments. 

Based on the current age distribution 

with few young team leaders, a potential 

gap in the number of academic 

leaders in microelectronics could arise. 

The growth of researcher positions 

takes place through funding of research 

grants, de facto allowing the research 

agencies to influence appointments and 

academic population dynamics in universities. 

Faculty levels and their research 

area distribution should be determined 

by the ability of universities to 

fund positions and by a carefully considered 

plan to develop the appropriate 

strategic and scientific relevance. 

3.3 Infrastructure and equipment 

The Panel found that the infrastructure 

is in general well supported (mostly 

from the Wallenberg foundation). Centres 

already established are working 

very well supporting and collaborating 

with each other. There seems to be a 

sufficient number of clean rooms for microelectronics 

related research, which 

will nevertheless benefit from being 

linked up in a national network. The 

Panel notes that efforts such as MyFab 

are steps in the right direction. This network 

could include the clean rooms of 

Lund, Linköping and KTH/ Stockholm 

University. The support of Myfab and 

maintenance of other labs must be increased 

by the agencies. Future systems 

will be built with scaled device 

and heterogeneous integration of other 

materials on silicon. Because of the basic 

nature of these devices the system 

performance will be increasingly dependent 

on their properties. It will become 

increasingly more important for 

the system industries to be competitive 

and successful to have better understanding 

of new devices, materials and 

technologies. 

3.4 Modelling and Simulation 

As we cross from micro to nano-structures, 

the complexity of the device 

structures with diverse materials can 

not be handled by experimentation 

alone as there are too many daunting 

choices. There is an increasing need of 

modelling and simulations to narrow 

down choices of experiments to be 

done. This becomes more critical for 

the nanostructures needing quantum 

mechanical modelling as the classical 

models become inadequate. Furthermore, 

circuit designers will require compact 

models of the new devices for exploring 

design with these devices. The 

Panel did not see any evidence of the 

modelling and simulation activity. This 

area should be strongly encouraged in 

the future. 

3.5 Business education 

The research in microelectronics can be 

highly effective in spinning off new start 

ups, e.g. as occurs in the Silicon Valley 

in the USA. However, for this to happen 

a combination of excellent technical 

and business skills along with ample 

availability of venture capital is essential. 

The Panel noted that in Sweden 

this potential is hampered by the small 

amount of venture capital available in 

this area and by the lack of business 

skills of the entrepreneurs. Taking clues 

from the Silicon Valley, courses on business 

and entrepreneurship should be 

made available to engineering and science 

students and availability of venture 

capital should be increased by active 

marketing of relevant Swedish 

research results to investors worldwide 

such as in the Silicon Valley.

Summary of Assessments 

15 

4 Summary of Assessments 

Based on the background reports of the 

rapporteurs, the Panel hearing and the 

remote evaluators’ reports the Panel 

found Swedish academic research in 

microelectronics to be excellent with 

outstanding highlights in each of the 

six different subareas. 

4.1 Silicon and wide bandgap 

components 

The overall scientific quality for the entities 

evaluated in this area was found to 

be excellent. The relevance ranges 

from medium to very high. Research activities 

in silicon and wide bandgap 

components are extremely important 

for the success of Swedish industry and 

have to be encouraged. It is the opinion 

of the Panel that it will become more 

important to have core competence in 

both these research activities even in 

pure system industries. 

For over three decades, there has 

been a quadrupling of transistor density 

and a doubling of electrical performance 

every 2 to 3 years. Silicon transistor technology, 

in particular CMOS has played a 

pivotal role in this and will continue to do 

so. However, there are several technical 

issues that are making proper device 

scaling increasingly difficult. With the 

enormous installed base of silicon manufacturing 

and design infrastructure it is 

highly unlikely that a totally different technology 

will be in mass production in the 

foreseeable future. Therefore, to continue 

the progress of microelectronics, innovative 

silicon based device structures 

capable of CMOS configuration that overcome 

the scaling problems, will have to 

replace planar bulk CMOS structures. 

This will require new structural, material 

and fabrication technology solutions that 

are generally compatible with current and 

forecasted installed silicon manufacturing. 

Examples of novel device structures 

are multi gate MOS and examples of novel 

materials are high mobility channel materials 

like strained silicon and germanium, 

high dielectric constant gate 

dielectrics and metal gates. The Panel 

believes that these new technologies will 

not only extend the life of Si-based electronics, 

but will also provide the platform 

for heterogeneous integration of other 

materials and devices not only for computing 

but more importantly for communications, 

transport, healthcare, environment, 

energy and many other future 

applications of electronics. Furthermore, 

advanced silicon will also provide a platform 

for integration of potentially revolutionary 

non-Si solutions. 

4.2 High speed electronics 

The overall scientific quality for the entities 

evaluated was found to be excellent 

whereas the impact and relevance 

to Swedish industry is very high in the 

largest part. 

The research area has a long and 

successful history in Sweden and had a 

significant influence on wireless and 

mobile communication, satellite technique, 

radar applications, radio astronomy, 

sensors and more recently THz-imaging 

and related security aspects. The 

technology needed for realisation of the 

related components is heterogeneous, 

and therefore complex, with respect to 

the choice of materials, device approaches 

and system aspects, in contrast 

to the digital world which is dominated 

by CMOS technology nearly 

exclusively. Today Europe’s wireless industry 

has a leading position, but key 

components like power amplifiers come 

from outside. Yet the physical layer 

determines the system performance, 

so research in this area has to be heterogeneous, 

too. Beside CMOS, which 

undoubtedly plays an increasingly important 

role also for high speed electronics, 

III-V and SiC semiconductor and 

e.g. ferroelectric based technologies 

are important. Especially for future 

developments aiming at higher frequencies 

and bandwidths, this mix of technologies 

is essential for the heterogeneous 

integration approach. This will 

also include, after carefully checking its 

application relevance, nano-processing 

and nano-components which are emerging 

rapidly in Sweden. 

4.3 Nanoelectronics 

The overall scientific quality of Swedish 

nanoelectronics research was found to 

be excellent and the Swedish scientists 

working in this area are recognized 

worldwide. The research in nanoelectronics 

is closer to basic science than 

the research in other areas of this evaluation 

but has high long term relevance. 

Nanoelectronics is a relatively young 

research topic with high expectations. It 

is still expanding and the international 

competition is high. The Swedish research 

groups have been involved in this 

area from the beginning and managed to 

position themselves very well in the competition. 

This is demonstrated in their 

leading role in many EU-funded collaborations 

and in their large number of citations 

and high-quality publications. The


strength of the Swedish research groups 

is based on their wise selection of research 

topics, expertise in materials 

growth and excellent infrastructure. 

With increasing international competition 

there are big challenges ahead. 

Some of the groups within the reporting 

entity are under-critical in size and their 

future is unclear due to the retirements or 

transfer of personnel. In these cases it is 

important for the funding agencies and 

the universities to support the continuation 

of excellent research efforts. The relevance 

of nanoelectronics to national industry 

comes from the high number of the 

licentiates and PhDs educated in this 

area. The funding agencies should recognize 

the basic nature of nanoelectronics 

research and support it also via the basic 

science funding programs. 

4.4 Organic electronics 

The scientific quality for the evaluated 

entities was found to be excellent. The 

evaluated entities have clearly identified 

their needs for the challenging objectives 

they have set out to pursue in the future. 

The relevance of this field at a Swedish 

and European level is very high. 

The large area of organic electronics 

has been selected for special support 

at the European level in the 7th Framework 

Program under the theme Information 

and Communication Technologies. 

Research in organic electronics in Sweden 

is therefore in line with European 

research efforts. In a national perspective, 

its relevance is even more profound 

due to the high profile national 

paper industry, the energy question and 

the link to biology. 

Swedish research in organic electronics 

should be consolidated by defining 

a strategy on printed electronics. A 

part of this could include concerted action 

with other Nordic countries, e.g., 

Finland, which also has research efforts 

in printed electronics in large scale as 

well as excellent research toward printing 

functional sub-micrometer structures. 

Further, the value chain in organic 

electronics should be strengthened 

by supporting a research line from materials, 

design, characterisation of device-relevant 

properties, testing laboratory-scale 

components, integration in 

circuits and testing of cost-efficient volume 

manufacturing. This should include 

applications in ambient intelligence, energy 

and medical areas, all of which are 

increasing economic activities where 

Sweden can secure strong position if a 

national strategy becomes a reality. 

4.5 Photonics 

Research in this area is being carried 

out in Sweden at a very high international 

level. On the average the research is 

rated as excellent and the relevance is 

high. Swedish researchers working in 

this area are worldwide recognized. 

The main emphasis of photonics research 

in Sweden is related to telecommunications. 

This is relevant for the 

Swedish industry in particular when 

considering that Ericsson did return 

back to optical fibre communication systems 

after merging with Marconi. Really 

outstanding research work has been 

conducted on ultra long haul high speed 

transmission systems; for future applications, 

however, also shorter transmission 

links will become important. Generally 

speaking the research with respect 

to optical fibre transmission should be 

strengthened in areas which are closer 

to application. 

The majority of projects are related to 

photonic materials and devices. This research 

has also a significant impact for 

the Swedish industry especially with respect 

to small and medium enterprises. 

With respect to nanophotonics it is still 

important to identify activities which are 

useful to the development of Swedish 

industry. These applications may well be 

outside the area of telecommunications, 

e.g. sensing devices for which the use of 

plasmonic waveguides or photonic crystals 

may be useful. 

The work on lighting, where LEDs 

will play a very significant role in the future, 

has also been important. However, 

the link between the research work and 

the industrial potential for Sweden has 

still to be developed. 

4.6 System design 

It is important to note that a system is 

only a relative term and that one definition 

of a system is that it is “the level of 

abstraction one above the level in which 

you are working”. Since the primary focus 

of Sweden’s microelectronic work 

has been in the area of device and materials 

research, the design and optimization 

of circuits has been the system 

level of interest, with an effort at four 

universities. These system (circuit) efforts 

contain some outstanding individual 

efforts while others range down to 

being merely good, with the overall assessment 

of the research quality being 

rated as excellent. There is also some 

inconsistency in this system (circuit) research 

with respect to the relevance to 

Sweden’s strategic goals, but overall it 

is considered high. 

The Panel believes that there should 

be a change of focus and a significant 

increase in support. The change of focus 

involves moving to the next level in 

system design, in which the circuit 

block (the previous focus of the “systems” 

research) is just a component 

and addresses the realization that, over 

the next 10 years, the advances in 

CMOS technology will allow complex 

chips that contain over a billion device 

elements and therefore will in turn allow 

complete systems on a chip (SOC).

Assessments of Research Areas 

17 

5 Assessments of Research Areas 

5.1 Silicon and Wide Bandgap 

Components 

The progress in microelectronics will require 

new structural, material and fabrication 

technology solutions that are 

generally compatible with current and 

forecasted installed silicon manufacturing. 

Examples of novel device structures 

are multi gate MOS and examples 

of novel materials are high mobility 

channel materials like strained silicon 

and germanium, high dielectric constant 

gate dielectrics and metal gates. The 

Panel believes that these new technologies 

will not only extend the life of Sibased 

electronics, but will also provide 

the platform for heterogeneous integration 

of other materials and devices not 

only for computing but more importantly 

for communications, transport, healthcare, 

environment, energy and many 

other future applications of electronics. 

Furthermore, advanced silicon will also 

provide platform for integration of potentially 

revolutionary non-Si solutions. 

Both these activities are extremely 

important for the success of the industry. 

Design of future systems will have 

increasingly scaled device and heterogeneous 

integration of other materials 

on silicon. The system performance will 

be increasingly dependent (good or bad) 

on the properties of these devices and 

materials. It will become increasingly 

more important to have core competence 

in these areas even in pure system 

industries. Thus research in these 

areas with appropriate connections to 

the industry has to be encouraged. 

The entities evaluated in this area 

span research in both areas. The overall 

scientific quality by the international 

standard is excellent and the relevance 

ranges from medium to very high. The 

KTH group is working on novel CMOS 

and related device structures, fabrication 

technology and materials while the 

other four groups are working on heterogeneous 

integration of other materials 

and devices. The work at KTH is of very 

high quality by international standards. 

This type of device work is very valuable 

to maintain excellence in the circuits 

and systems activity. The Uppsala 

group is working on a broad range of industry 

oriented discrete devices for a 

variety of electronic systems and solar 

cells which has very strong connections 

with the industry. The focus of the research 

at Linköping is on growth and 

characterization of wide bandgap semiconductors 

with applications to highvoltage, 

high-power, high-frequency devices 

and is well connected to the 

industry. The research in the Gallium 

Nitride entity is focused on experimental 

development of growth techniques 

for wide bandgap semiconductors and 

material properties related to electronic 

and optical applications. The activity in 

the Chalmers group appears to be a collection 

of individual physics oriented 

projects and lacks focus. 

5.1.1 Comments on reporting entities 

Silicon Research at KTH 

The research carried out in this entity is 

application oriented engineering. It covers 

a broad spectrum of activities on 

novel fabrication processes, materials 

and devices with several outstanding 

achievements e.g. development of sidewall 

transfer lithography for controled 

formation of nanostructures and application 

to several electronic and optical 

devices, low noise, high-k gate dielectrics 

for MOSFET, 1/f-noise studies, significant 

contributions to sub 100 nm 

three-dimensional structure development, 

Schottky barrier source/drain 

technology to lower parasitic resistance, 

simple approach for fabrication of 

a rectifier based on carbon nanotube 

(CNT) network, Si-quantum dots with 

outstanding photo-luminiscense results, 

SiC-bipolar transistor with world record 

1100 V breakdown voltage. 

The scientific quality of the research 

at KTH is excellent to outstanding and 

is at the cutting edge of technology and 

the relevance is very high. The KTH 

group has extensive collaboration with 

international industry as well as startup 

activities and strong activities in EU- 

FP6 and FP7. 

Silicon Research at Uppsala University 

Silicon research at Uppsala is application 

oriented work on discrete devices 

involving synthesis of electronic materials 

as well as modelling, design, fabrication 

and characterization of discrete 

electronic components on the other. 

The first category includes: thin piezoelectric 

films, SOI materials gate stack 

materials, ferroelectric materials. The 

second group of activities includes: 

high power, high frequency LDMOS transistors, 

solar cell modules, microwave 

electro-acoustic components such as 

resonators, filters, oscillators, etc, physical 

and biochemical electro-acoustic 

sensors, components on hybrid Si/SiC 

substrates and integrated antennas. 

The scientific quality of the work is excellent 

to outstanding.


The work on one hand is scientifically 

oriented and of very high importance 

for Sweden´s long-term competiveness. 

There appears to be extensive 

collaboration within academia and industry 

in Sweden and Europe and transfer 

of technology to the industry. 

Silicon Carbide Research at Linköping 

University 

The focus of the research is on growth 

and characterization of wide bandgap 

semiconductors, SiC for high-voltage 

and high-power, GaN, AlGaN and AlN for 

high-frequency devices. In particular the 

work on SiC epitaxial growth technique 

using chlorine containing precursors 

and large-area uniform growth of Al- 

GaN/GaN HEMT structure using hot-wall 

MOCVD is noteworthy. Within the research 

entity they have developed new 

growth techniques such as chloridebased 

SiC growth and hot-wall MOCVD 

growth of III-nitrides. They have also 

done investigation of various techniques 

to minimize defects. They do 

well focused materials research and collaborate 

with other groups for design, 

processing and evaluation of devices. 

The scientific quality of the research is 

excellent. 

The process and equipment research 

is done often in collaboration 

with industry. The relevance is medium 

to high. 

Gallium Nitride Research Linköping 

University 

The research is focused on experimental 

development of growth techniques 

for wide bandgap semiconductors and 

material properties related to electronic 

and optical applications. The projects 

concern four categories of materials: IIInitrides, 

magnetic semiconductor structures, 

III-V nitrides and SiC. The work is 

strongly fundamental, physics materials 

based research. There appears to be a 

lack of device/component work. Materials 

covered are very important for communication, 

power electronics (automotive, 

mobile communications), 

illumination, solar energy systems etc. 

A stronger coupling to device people is 

needed. 

The entity has extensive interaction, 

however, mostly with academia in Sweden, 

Europe, USA, Japan, Australia and 

China. Collaboration is mainly with respect 

to fundamental materials research. 

Their work has highly esteemed 

world leading position with overall excellent 

scientific quality. The research 

is of medium to high importance for 

Sweden´s long-term competiveness. 

Silicon Research at Chalmers 

The area of the activity is quite broad, 

being a collection of individual physics 

oriented projects without focus and connection 

to device community. Projects 

include thermal wafer bonding, nanogaps 

for molecular attachment, carbon 

nanotubes for integration into 

CMOS technology and for AFM/TEM applications, 

MEMS based sensors, biodetectors, 

quantum dots, silicon nanowires 

and high-k-dielectrics. Work is 

more development oriented and should 

be of more concern about the state-ofthe-art. 

They need closer connection 

with the device community. They have 

extensive collaboration mostly in Europe. 

Overall scientific quality of their work 

is very good to excellent. The research 

is of medium to high importance for 

Sweden´s long-term competiveness. 

5.2 High Speed Electronics 

Today Europe´s wireless industry has a 

leading position, but key components 

like power amplifiers come from outside. 

Yet the physical layer determines 

the system performance, so research in 

this area has to be heterogeneous, too. 

Beside CMOS, which undoubtedly plays 

an increasingly important role also for 

high speed electronics, III-V and SiC 

semiconductor and e.g. ferroelectric 

based technologies are important. This 

mix of technologies is essential for a 

heterogeneous integration approach 

which will be necessary for future developments 

aiming at higher frequencies 

and bandwidths. This will also include, 

after carefully checking its application 

relevance, nano-processing and nanocomponents 

which are emerging rapidly 

in Sweden. 

The High Speed Electronics research 

area is represented by mainly 

two groups, the Microwave Electronics 

Laboratory and the THz group, both 

from the Microtechnology and Nanoscience 

Department at Chalmers. Together 

they cover the broad frequency 

range from below 1 GHz to above 1 THz. 

The Microwave Electronics Laboratory 

covers the frequency range up to about 

250 GHz and provides the heterogeneous 

materials and component basis 

from an application oriented, engineering 

point of view, covering the full line 

up to modules and subsystems. They 

are well aware of activities in the field 

worldwide, indicated by creating the 

“European Microwave Interest Group” 

recently. The THz group has contributed 

high level research in a niche, mostly 

space applications, but could contribute 

to and extend the activities in microand 

mm-waves of the Microwave Electronics 

Laboratory when coupled more 

strongly to them by using their highly industry 

relevant skills and facilities. This 

would be beneficial for both groups. 

Overall the scientific quality is excellent 

whereas the impact and relevance 

is very high in the largest part.


19 


Microwaves Research at Chalmers 

The research focus is on electronic 

components, circuits and modules for 

applications from low GHz to THz frequencies 

employing different semiconductor 

technologies: InP based HEMTs, 

SiC, AlGaN/GaN from in house processes; 

and Si-CMOS from foundries. Towards 

module preparation also flip chip 

mounting is available. Strong activities 

are multifunctional MMIC design for all 

relevant components, and full range of 

high frequency measurements up to 

325 GHz. Especially impressive is the 

unique and balanced mix of applied science, 

engineering and pilot line 

processing, which is also open for partners 

from academia and industry, and 

has high significance for future developments. 

The engineering oriented scientific 

level is excellent to outstanding. The 

impact and relevance of the work is 

very high for Sweden’s long-term competiveness 

because of their role to provide 

guidance to industry, for e.g. selection 

of fabrication processes derived 

from research and well educated engineers 

needed for future enabling technologies. 

This claim is really met demonstrated 

by the extraordinary mix and number 

of industrial projects and collaborations. 

Terahertz Systems Research at 

Chalmers 

The research claim is to focus on new 

materials, devices and subsystems in 

the frequency range from 10 GHz to 10 

THz for applications radar, THz-imaging, 

radio astronomy and wireless communications. 

The main two directions are 

Hetero-Barrier-Varactors for high power 

THz sources using mixing, and tuneable 

ferroelectric varactors for high Q resonators, 

which both are not really new 

approaches, but were developed to 

show excellent results. A significant 

part of support is from the European 

Space Agency, and the work therefore 

not driven by industrial needs up to 

now. 

The scientific level is very good to 

excellent. The research is of medium 

importance for Sweden´s long-term 

competiveness, but in a niche, only. It 

could be increased significantly by tighter 

coupling with the Microwaves Research 

Group at Chalmers. 

5.3 Nanoelectronics 

In summary, the Panel does not find 

particular weaknesses in Swedish nanoelectronics 

research. Its scientific level 

is excellent. Like in other small countries 

it has only medium- and long-term 

relevance. We recommend separating 

the medium and long term projects into 

different funding programs. 

In order to analyze the strategic relevance 

of nanoelectronics research it 

can be divided into two parts, according 

to the method used for producing the 

nanosize components. In the traditional 

top-down production various lithographic 

methods, borrowed from the CMOS 

technology, are used for making submicrometer 

devices. This part of the nanoelectronics 

research is CMOS-compatible, 

supports directly Si road map 

(more Moore), is mostly conducted by 

big semiconductor companies, and has 

strong short-term relevance. 

In the second part of nanoelectronics 

research other materials than silicon 

and are utilized to develop new bottom-up 

methods, such as 

self-assembly, to produce new types of 

functional nanocomponents. This part 

of nanoelectronics research is often 

interdisciplinary, borrows ideas from 

material science, chemistry and even 

biology, and suits well into the academic 

environment. Most of the new production 

methods of novel components 

are not CMOS-compatible and have only 

long-term relevance outside the silicon 

roadmap. Some of the materials and 

production methods are, however, 

CMOS-compatible and can be utilized in 

hybrid nanocomponents on silicon platform 

(usually denoted as heterogeneous 

integration). The hybrid technology, 

where novel nanoelectronic components 

serve e.g. as sensors, is expected to 

have strong medium-term relevance. 

The integrated cheap sensor systems 

are expected to find a wide variety of 

applications in traditional industry (automotive) 

as well as in new mass markets 

in environmental, health care, energy 

and biotechnology sectors (see the 

strategic European research agenda 

ENIAC: www.eniac.eu). 

This evaluation of Swedish Microelectronics 

research includes five university 

entities in the nanoelectronics 

basket. None of the teams are directly 

connected to the above mentioned first 

category, i.e. to silicon road map, and 

their research does not have any shortterm 

relevance. On the other hand, this 

is a wise decision in a small country like 

Sweden which does not have integrated 

circuit manufacturing. Even in US a 

very limited number of universities are 

involved in “more Moore” -type of research. 

The research programs of all the five 

entities include strong growth and/or 

characterization projects of novel nonsilicon 

materials for various nanodevice 

applications. All of them are supported 

by good infrastructure. Most of the 

projects have emerged from generous 

past investments in Swedish material 

research. The projects have medium 

medium-term strategic relevance for hybrid 

technology. The relevance of the


Swedish research effort in nanoelectronics 

is at least on the same level as 

in compatible best international research 

programs. 

More than half of the research 

projects in the nanoelectronics basket 

can be characterized to be curiosity 

driven basic research (e.g. quantum 

computing) which has high long-term 

strategic relevance. Again the relevance 

of the Swedish nanoelectronics research 

is not lower than in similar international 

projects. 

When judging the strategic relevance 

of nanoelectronics research we 

have to take into account also the high 

number of PhDs produced by this research 

area. More than 50 % of the PhD 

students have already been hired by private 

enterprises. These PhDs will transfer 

the latest know-how from academia 

to industry. 

What comes to the average absolute 

scientific level of the Swedish nanoelectronics 

research, we judge it to be 

excellent in international ranking. The 

judgment is based on the high relative 

number of Swedish publications in high 

impact-factor journals (Nature, Nature 

Materials, Nano Letters, Physical Review 

Letters and Applied Physics Letters...), 

on the high personal citation 

numbers of the Swedish scientists (reflected 

in high h-index), and on the demonstrated 

international leadership of 

some of the research teams (organization 

of main topical conferences, invitations 

to speak at main conferences of 

the field etc). 


Nanotubes Research at Chalmers 

The CNT research at Chalmers is a relatively 

young effort built around strong 

expertise on growth, characterization 

and theoretical understanding of carbon 

nanotubes. The leader of the team is an 

internationally well-known scientist and 

an excellent manager of scientific 

projects. The other team members are 

highly qualified senior scientists, especially 

in the area of theoretical condensed 

matter physics. 

The CNT research is very competitive 

at the moment. With well selected 

research topics and narrow enough focus 

the Chalmers team has maintained 

the critical size to make a real impact 

on this highly contested research area. 

The quantity and quality of the scientific 

output of the team has been very high. 

The 9 Physical Review Letters, 11 Applied 

Physical Letters and 4 Nano Letters 

prove the originality of its research. 

Taking into account the used resources 

and person-years the scientific impact 

has been better than excellent. 

The small group has produced during 

the reporting period an amazingly 

high number of PhDs (10). The group 

has paid proper attention to patenting. 

The team has been successful in developing 

NEMS applications of CNT. Nokia 

has been interested in these applications. 

Even though the nanoelectronics 

research outside silicon roadmap (see 

above) has usually only long-term relevance, 

the strategic relevance of this 

project is medium. 

The future of this research entity 

does not look good, because the two 

experimentalists of the team have left 

Chalmers. We recommend that Chalmers 

will continue this excellent basic research 

effort by hiring a new senior experimentalist 

on this area. 

The scientific quality is excellent to 

outstanding and the strategic relevance 

is high. 

Quantum Electronics Research at 

Chalmers 

Quantum electronics research at Chalmers 

has long traditions and the team is 

internationally well known. The team includes 

very strong individual scientists 

with complementary expertise. Their 

profiles cover the spectrum from basic 

science to applications and from theoretical 

to experimental skills. The team 

has access to state of the art infrastructure 

in MC2. The team has strong 

collaborative contacts to excellent foreign 

groups. It has acted as a coordinator 

in many EU-projects, demonstrating 

excellent international leadership on 

their research area. 

The quality and impact of this 

team’s scientific output is excellent. 

The output during the reporting period 

includes 2 Nature, 1 Science, 10 Physical 

Review Letters, 2 Nano Letters and 

1 Nature Physics. This is a remarkable 

record for a research group of this size. 

The team has produced 13 PhDs 

and it has been paying attention to applications 

and collaboration to industry. 

The team does not report any patents. 

The team is not reporting any future 

plans. The retirements of key members 

present a challenge but also create an 

opportunity to redirect the research 

agenda. 



is low. 

Nanostructure Physics Research at KTH 

The KTH team in Nanostructure physics 

has excellent senior scientists. They 

have managed to build a very good infrastructure 

for their studies. They have 

also a strong network of international 

academic and industrial collaborators. 

Their studies in spin-related electronics 

have resulted in proposal of novel devices 

and experimental demonstration 

of spin-diode system, with a rectification 

ratio larger than 100. 

During 2003-2008 the groups has 

been very productive and the quality of


21 

their scientific output has been an excellent 

level (5 Physical Review Letters, 

3 Applied Physics Letters and 3 Nano 

Letters), when the size of the research 

group is taken into account. 

The societal impact of the group has 

been very good. They have produced 3 

patents and 6 PhDs out of which 5 were 

hired by industry. 

The group is small and at the moment 

undercritical. In the future the 

groups should hire one more senior 

member or focus more carefully their 

research topics. Otherwise their scientific 

impact will suffer. 

The scientific quality is excellent 

and the strategic relevance is high. 

Spintronics Research at KTH 

The Spintronics research team at KTH 

is at the moment undercritical (only 2 

senior people) but most probably it is 

surrounded by a strong scientific community. 

The infrastructure of the team 

seems to be in good shape. The small 

group size means strong fluctuations in 

funding and number of personnel, and 

longer development times for promising 

research ideas. 

The scientific output, normalized by 

the team size and the low funding volume, 

is very good (1 Nature Materials, 

1 Applied Physics Letters). The team 

has made an interesting and highly cited 

discovery on magnetism in doped 

ZnO films. The further development of 

this idea has been slow, presumably 

due to the small size of the group. 

The team has produced 1 PhD, 4 

patents and one very promising invention 

for large scale applications. This 

invention has high relevance because it 

can be utilized with the help of heterogeneous 

integrations in mass-produced 

sensors. 

The future of the group looks weak. 

The senior team member is already retired 

and the second member has only 

a junior position at KTH. We recommend 

KTH to secure the future of this 

small but promising research line. 

The scientific quality is very good 

and the strategic relevance is high to 

very high. 

Nanometer Structures Research at Lund 

University 

The Lund Nanoelectronics team forms a 

relatively large, well organized and well 

managed group of scientists. They are 

collaborating effectively with each other 

and have a wide network of foreign partners. 

They also have the necessary and 

sufficient infrastructure to support their 

present projects and they are also managing 

the infrastructure well. The 

present infrastructure is the result of a 

careful investment plan over a period of 

more than 10 years. 

The scientific output of the Lund 

team, normalized by the size and resources, 

is excellent to outstanding in 

quality and impact. In the growth and 

characterization of semiconductor nanowires 

the team is one of the two international 

leaders. The output is well 

cited and published in journals with relatively 

high impact number: the number 

of articles in Nature Materials (5), Nature 

Physics (1), Physical Review Letters 

(7), Nano Letters (27) and Applied Physics 

Letters (28) is excellent. 

The societal impact of the Lund 

team in terms of PhDs, patents and 

spin-off companies is remarkable. The 

team has certainly made a tremendous 

effort to make a real impact. In the application 

areas outside the silicon roadmap, 

without high volume products, the 

strategic relevance for Sweden is medium 

to high. 

The future of the Lund team looks 

bright. One of the big challenges ahead 

will be the retirement of the present 

outstanding leader of the team. Also, 

focus of the more mature aspects of 

nanowire research towards device-oriented 

research is recommended. 



is medium to high 

5.4 Organic Electronics 

The area of large area organic electronics 

has been selected for special support 

at European level in the 7th Framework 

Program under the theme 

Information and Communication Technologies. 

In particular, the research and 

industrial communities have networked 

in Europe, forming clusters and, more 

importantly, setting up European Technology 

Platforms, supported mainly by 

European industry, as well as by Public 

Authorities and the Research institutions 

(higher education and research 

centres). The European Technology platforms 

of relevance to the research reported 

by the units here include photovoltaics, 

photonics, manufacturing and 

nanomedicine among others. These European 

Technology platforms have published 

their Strategic Research Agendas 

and the topics covered by the reporting 

units fit very well with the wider effort in 

Europe. In other words, research in organic 

electronics in Sweden is in line 

with European research efforts. 

In the national context, its relevance 

is even more profound due to the high 

profile national paper industry, the energy 

question and the link to biology. 

For example: 

1) Research in manufacturing methods 

such as roll-to-roll printing of organic 

electronic components, which has 

test beds in ACREO, is based on a 

long Swedish and Nordic industrial 

tradition. The added value is derived 

here from novel versatile variations


using new organic materials for 

cost-efficient electronic applications. 

This includes research in 

printable functional organic materials. 

2) Research on specific devices such 

as organic transistors and diodes 

suitable for manufacturing with rollto-roll 

printing techniques, which will 

be incorporated in future technology-rich 

components, large-area elements 

for applications in ambient 

intelligence and in the textile industry. 

3) Research in photovoltaics, addressing 

the cost-efficiency factor by using 

concepts of nanophotonics, and 

in biology, exploring new organic materials 

for applications in the life sciences, 

such as microfluidics, electrochemical 

circuits, intra-cell 

sensing and stem cell differentiation. 

The biomedical areas build on 

the world-renowned expertise of the 

Karolinska Institute through firmly 

anchored and fruitful collaboration 

Thus, the relevance of this field at national 

and European level is very (extremely) 

high. 

Two research units were evaluated 

in Organic Electronics, both belonging 

to Linköping University and, more specifically, 

to the Centre of Organic Electronics 

(COE), together they cover key 

areas in organic electronics from material, 

to components, fabrication technologies, 

all the way to circuits and applications. 

One common aspect of both units is 

the successful collaboration with COE 

group of Prof M Andersson at Chalmers 

University on organic materials. 


Organic Electronics Research at 

Linköping University 

The unit has a longer tradition than the 

former one. Two aspects are particularly 

salient in the reporting period. One is 

the Finite Element simulation methods 

developed for the design of electrochemical 

systems to be printed on paper, 

since is has a potential predictive 

power extending to the expected device 

performance after fabrication. The other 

is the work in organic photovoltaics 

which reached 4 % efficiency by making 

use of novel designs and emerging nanophotonic 

concepts. The research is 

partly evolutionary, building on solid 

foundations of soft matter physics and 

optoelectronic device physics applied to 

organic materials. Some device-relevant 

aspects were not investigated yet, such 

as time-stability of organic devices. 

Over the reporting period the unit 

included four Principal Investigators, 

trained 19 researchers up to PhD/licenctiate 

level with a funding of approximately 

SEK 46 M. The Principal Investigators 

are in their 40s and 50s and 

their selected publications are nearly all 

in high impact journals. They have published 

over 130 articles and their combined 

citations over their careers are 

over 9700. There have been 10 patents 

filed in the reporting period. 


and the strategic relevance is high. 

Paper Electronics at Linköping University 

The unit performs leading-edge research 

in paper electronics and in solidstate 

electronics with a novel activity in 

basic research in organic bioelectronics. 

On the technological front a major 

achievement is in the infrastructure 

front having set up a test manufacturing 

laboratory at ACREO which links up to 

several industrial beneficiaries. While at 

present research is focused on printing 

features of 10-100 µm, future developments 

are foreseen to reduce the feature 

size, potentially down to molecular 

scale. For the device research the unit 

collaborates with leading laboratories in 

Europe and the Americas. On the more 

basic science front the modelling of the 

molecular/nano switch and the control 

of intra-cell signalling are particular 

highlights. From the extensive and intimate 

co-operation with industry and the 

scope and numbers of patented knowhow, 

it is not difficult to see that this 

research field and the results of this 

unit impact electronics, packaging, 

pharmaceutical, optical, energy, display, 

security, food and biotechnology-based 

industries. 

Over the reporting period the unit 

included three Principal Investigators, 

trained 15 researchers up to PhD/licenciate 

level with a funding of approximately 

SEK 56 M. The Principal Investigators 

are in their 40s and their 

selected publications are nearly all in 

high impact journals. They have published 

over 60 articles and their combined 

citations over their careers are 

almost 7000. There have been 17 patents 

filed and 7 spin offs set up in the 

reporting period. 


and the relevance is very high. 

5.5 Photonics 

The main emphasis of the Photonics research 

in Sweden is related to telecommunications. 

This is relevant for Sweden 

in particular when considering that 

Ericsson did return back to optical fiber 

communication systems after merging 

with Marconi. 

The Research work on optical fibre 

transmission systems is in particular 

being carried out at Chalmers. In the 

past the activities concentrated there


23 

on ultra long haul high speed systems 

and important scientific achievements 

had been achieved. With respect to industrial 

relevance (in particular with respect 

to Ericsson) it will be important to 

consider high capacity data transmission 

also for shorter transmission distances 

(e.g. fibre-to-the-home or local 

area networks). There are a lot of ideas 

under way for future projects in this direction 

at Chalmers especially with respect 

to 100 Gb-Ethernet, but it must 

be checked whether such a small group 

will be able to handle all these projects 

and still achieving world leading results. 

Optical fibre transmission is also 

considered at KTH in terms of quantum 

cryptography. Even though the research, 

being carried out there is really outstanding 

from the scientific point of 

view, there is little impact on the industry 

in Sweden, since the key distribution 

via quantum cryptography is still a niche 

application. 

With respect to optical fibre transmission 

it is thus recommended that 

the research will be strengthened in areas 

which are closer to application. 

The majority of projects being carried 

out in Sweden in the “Photonics” 

area are related to photonic materials 

and devices. In particular, the work being 

carried out at Chalmers and at the 

KTH on semiconductor lasers and high 

speed modulators is outstanding and 

has a substantial industrial impact; e.g. 

with respect to Syntune, Zarlink as component 

manufactures or to help Ericsson 

to work on advanced systems research 

with state-of-the-art devices. 

Even though the panel did get the impression 

of a good cooperation between 

Chalmers and KTH on this subject there 

may still room for intensified collaboration. 

The applications for the research 

work at KTH on nanophotonics are not 

as obvious, even though the work is of 

high scientific quality. It will be important 

to identify activities which are useful 

to the development for the Swedish 

industry. These applications may be 

well outside of the area of telecommunications, 

e.g. sensing devices for which 

the use of plasmonic waveguides or 

photonic crystals may be quite useful. 

Other non-telecom driven areas involve 

the research work on liquid crystals, 

conducted at Chalmers. Even 

though there is no real display industry 

in Sweden, interesting application areas 

had been identified (welding helmet) 

supporting innovative Swedish products. 

Very important has also been the 

work on lighting where LED:s will play a 

very important role in the future, but 

the link between the research work and 

the industrial potential for Sweden has 

still to be developed. 


Photonic communication research at 

Chalmers 

Scientific quality: The group has a very 

high reputation in high speed optical fibre 

transmission. Outstanding results 

have also been achieved in the area of 

fibre optical parametric amplifiers (world 

leading group) and in “optical sampling”. 

Outstanding theoretical work has 

been performed with respect to polarization 

mode dispersion and polarization 

dependent loss. 

Impact and relevance: With respect 

to the work of optical sampling, the 

company PicoSolve has been established. 

The company has presently 6 

employees, but significant growth can 

be expected. Extensive work is being 

done on optical performance monitoring 

on a fibre line installed between Stockholm 

and Hudiksvall, which turns out to 

be quite relevant to the industrial partners 

involved. 

Future: Future activities will, e.g., involve 

activities in the area of 100 Gb- 

Ethernet and activities on shorter links, 

including links with multimode fibres, 

borrowing techniques from mobile transmission. 

Personnel and Infrastructure: The 

group involves about 12 people, and related 

to this number the group produces 

a high amount of outstanding research. 

Peter Andrekson did also manage to get 

funding for investments, so that he can 

use state of the art equipment. 

Collaboration: The group is involved 

in excellent international and national 

networks, which is expressed also by 

the involvement in several EU projects. 

The local cooperation with the group on 

photonic components (Anders Larsson) 

is also very efficient. 


is outstanding and relevance is very 

high. 

Photonic component research at Linköping 

University 

Scientific quality: Outstanding results 

have been achieved in the area of ZnO 

materials and devices. The international 

visibility is documented by a large 

number of invited talks around the 

world. However, in the period 2003 - 

2007, there is only one successful PhD 

(to be finished in 2008). 

Impact and relevance: The work may 

be of high relevance for the lighting industry. 

There are industrial contacts to 

Osram and there is a company 

StormLED for marketing patents which 

have been filed within the group. 

Future: A lot of ideas are being created 

in this group involving devices with 

nanostructures and nano-rods and organic-inorganic 

devices. In this respect 

the group (mainly Magnus Willander 

himself) is very creative. 

Personnel and Infrastructure: In the


past the group had been very small 

(only about 2 PhD students) and was 

thus under-critical. Now the situation 

seems to get better; and indeed the 

topic of the research with respect to efficient 

lighting is very important. With 

respect to infrastructure a new MOCVD 

system is just being set up, so that an 

adequate infrastructure is available. 

Collaboration: Magnus Willander is 

coordinating a European project and 

there are several international collaborations; 

internal cooperations are not 

as obvious. 


is excellent and the relevance is medium. 

Quantum optics Research at KTH 

Scientific quality: The group is conducting 

excellent research in the area of 

quantum cryptography. They have a lot of 

highly cited research papers and they are 

developing really new ideas like the “decoy 

state quantum cryptography”. This 

research work is a rather basic research 

which, however, might have significant 

impact in generating new ideas in the 

wider range of quantum electronics. 

Impact and relevance: Even though 

a secure key transmission is quite important, 

the direct cooperation with industrial 

companies is still weak, and 

thus, there is little impact on the industry 

in Sweden. There is some interest 

from the defence department of Sweden. 

Future: There are a lot of ideas 

around in this group which may be important 

for an improved basic understanding 

of Quantum Optics. 

Personnel and Infrastructure: Due to 

a lack of financial funding the group has 

become smaller and one must be careful 

that the size of this group does not 

become undercritical. 

Collaboration: The success of this 

group is very well documented by the 

involvement in a large number of EU 

projects. Presently, the fraction of EU 

funding approaches 50 % which is perhaps 

already too high for a stable development. 

The success in European 

projects is also documented by the Descartes 

Prize in 2004. 


is excellent and relevance is medium. 

Photonic devices Research at Chalmers 

Scientific quality: In particular the work 

on VCSEL:s and disk lasers is very impressive. 

These contributions are really 

at the highest international level, including 

the activities of extending the emission 

wavelength up to 1.55 µm for lasers 

on GaAs substrates. The work on 

opto-electronic A/D converters is interesting 

with high sampling rates of 40 

GS/s (G samples/s), but the competition 

with Electronics is difficult to beat. 

With respect to liquid crystals very 

promising research work is being conducted 

with respect to very fast ( ~ µs) 

devices. 

Impact and relevance: The laser activities 

are of a high level both with repect 

to basic physics but they have also 

a big industrial impact as demonstrated, 

e.g., by the cooperation with Zarlink. 

With respect to liquid crystals applications 

are being explored for a new type 

of welding mask visor capable of stroboscopically 

following the light intensity 

during pulsed welding. The industrial impact 

for the work on opto-electronic A/D 

is still very weak. 

Future: The future work on lasers will 

be directed to higher speed (40 Gbit/s) 

and wavelength extension which is very 

relevant. The relevance is also high for 

the liquid crystal work. The future plans 

for the activities in Optics are not as 

clear. 


number of PhD students is reasonable 

with an adequate infrastructure. 

Collaboration: The high level of international 

cooperation is underlined by 

the involvement in several European 

projects. With respect to the laser work 

the group has an outstanding international 

visibility. 


is excellent and relevance is high. 

Photonic and microwave engineering 

Research at KTH 

Scientific quality: This is a very large 

group with a large number of really 

world leading research contributions in 

particular with respect to the 1.3 µm 

VCSEL (in cooperation with Chalmers) 

and the 100 Gbit/s modulator. Impressive 

results have also been achieved in 

the area of Nanophotonics, in particular 

the experimental evidence of negative 

refraction in Photonic crystals is remarkable. 

Impact and relevance: An impressive 

number of spin-off companies have 

been established. Intensive cooperation 

exists in the field of laser diodes with 

the spin-off company Syntune and with 

Zarlink. The excellent results on high 

speed modulators enable the group to 

play a major part in a new CELTIC 

project (100 Gb-Ethernet) in cooperation 

with Ericsson. Furthermore a lot of 

outstanding results have been obtained 

in the area of photonic crystals, but the 

applications are not as obvious. 

Future: Visionary plans exist with respect 

to functional photonic materials, 

nanophotonics and high capacity optical 

information systems. These plans are 

very ambitious and care must be taken 

that activities are identified which can 

be transferred to existing or new Swedish 

companies. 

Personnel and Infrastructure: 47 

PhDs/Lic have been graduated during


25 

the last 5 years which is a very satisfactory 

number. 

Collaboration: The group is engaged 

in a large number of EU- and other international 

projects. The group has a high 

international visibility. 


is excellent and the relevance is high. 

Photonic materials Research at 

Chalmers 

Scientific quality: Good results have 

been obtained in cooperation with KTH 

on growing AlN/GaN superlattice materials 

with MBE. It is remarkable, that 

good results have been obtained also in 

devices with organic materials. 

Impact and relevance: The group 

had been quite successful in growing 

superlattice materials, a possible application 

might be in the area of quantum 

cascade lasers, but this has still to 

be proven. 

Future: Since the group has been 

shrinking considerably, it will be difficult 

to build up again a group of significant 

international visibility. 


group has become now quite small (only 

3 persons and 2 of them are just leaving, 

lack of critical mass) and new investment 

is required. 

Collaboration: There is some cooperation 

with KTH on AlN/GaN superlattices, 

but based on the very small group 

much more cooperation would be required. 

Even within Chalmers a much 

more intense cooperation would be necessary. 

The European collaborations 

are also weak, during the reporting period 

the group had not been involved in 

any European project. 


is good and relevance is low. 

5.6 System Design 

It is important to note that a system is 

only a relative term and that one definition 

of a system is that it is “the level of 

abstraction one above the level in which 

you are working”. Since the primary focus 

of Sweden’s Microelectronic work 

has been in the area of device and materials 

research, the design and optimization 

of circuits has been the system 

level of interest, with an effort at 4 Universities. 

These system (circuit) efforts 

contain some outstanding individual efforts 

while others range down to being 

merely good, with the overall assessment 

of the research quality being rated 

as excellent. There is also some inconsistency 

in this system (circuit) research 

with respect to the relevance to Sweden’s 

strategic goals, but overall it is 

considered high. 

The level of excellence in research 

quality arises from the international recognition 

and publication in the top international 

engineering journals and conferences 

and the sophistication of the 

integrated circuits which have been designed. 

The excellence in relevance 

stems from training of students which 

are in a particularly high demand in 

Swedish industry as well as the focus 

on telecommunication building block circuits 

which are central to an important 

part of Sweden’s economy. One of the 

primary issues which keep these efforts 

from being at the highest international 

level is the relatively small level of funding 

(compared to many other programs 

in microelectronics) which results in 

some of these being funded at almost 

sub critical levels at least compared to 

international norms. 

It is recommended that there are 

two changes which are needed to bring 

these efforts to the outstanding level. 

One is that there should be a change of 

focus and a significant increase in support. 

The change of focus involves moving 

to the next level in system design, in 

which the circuit block (the previous focus 

of the “systems” research) is just a 

component and addresses the realization 

that, over the next 10 years, the 

advances in CMOS technology will allow 

complex chips that contain over a billion 

device elements and therefore will in 

turn allow complete systems on a chip 

(SOC). These SOC’s will contain multiple 

analog and digital circuits as well as 

multiple (possibly multicore) embedded 

processors to be integrated. These 

complex SOC’s, will implement not only 

the signal processing and communication 

algorithms, but protocols and user 

interfaces at a level of flexibility which 

must be obtained at the lowest possible 

cost and power. The programming 

task of these highly parallel architectures 

will require new computing models, 

which are as yet not understood. Of 

particular importance to SOC design, 

relevant to Swedish industry, will be 

chips that implement flexible radio networks. 

It is encouraged that cross disciplinary 

efforts which couple this SOC research 

direction to new device and material 

components be included, with the 

goal of allowing unique and possibly revolutionary 

new capabilities. Research in 

advanced packaging concepts will be 

required to merge these two areas, 

since the CMOS fabrication will be performed 

at foreign foundries which will 

allow use of the most advanced technology 

at a relatively low cost to the 

system researchers. 

Another important research direction 

is to use the exponentially increasing 

digital capability of CMOS to compensate 

for the limitations or to allow 

exploitation of these new devices and 

materials to meet novel or more demanding 

application requirements. This 

extends even to the compensation of 

impairments of integrated CMOS analog


circuits which will be increasingly difficult 

to design as the technology is exponentially 

scaled to ever smaller and 

denser SOC’s. This optimization should 

be performed in close cooperation with 

the ultimate application, which will insure 

relevance to present and potentially 

new Swedish companies. 

In order to support the above research 

agenda it will be necessary to 

develop new SOC level design methodologies 

as well as simulators and optimizers. 

These should be able to exploit 

design tools and simulators which support 

not only advanced CMOS technology, 

but also the new components coming 

from the device and material 

research. Since this activity will cover 

research that ranges from basic to application 

driven with strong industrial 

relevance it does not naturally fit within 

the scope of one of the three funding 

agencies (VR, SSF and Vinnova). It is 

therefore recommended that such a 

program have funding participation from 

all three. 

Such an integrated approach to the 

research across what is defined as Microelectronics 

in Sweden will allow advances 

in CMOS technology to be exploited 

in ways that are uniquely 

beneficial to Swedish strategic interests. 


System Design Research at KTH 

The reporting entity covered many activities 

during the reporting period, including: 

• Low power RF and mixed signal circuits 

for convergent wireless (we 

take it to mean combined wide- and 

local area applications) handhelds 

• Software defined radio 

• Low power digital design, chip communication 

and interconnect design 

• Technology to print RFID and other 

circuits and systems on paper 

The areas of activities have are of 

very high importance for Sweden´s 

long-term competiveness and research 

carried out are on the whole of excellent 

quality. The nascent printed circuits 

on paper activities have the potential to 

have very high impact. 

The RF-IC activities peaked at the 

beginning of the reporting period, with 

the publication of a highly integrated 

single-chip wireless LAN transceiver in 

RF CMOS. Subsequently the group has 

redirected its efforts towards reconfigurable 

and software defined radio concepts 

and test circuits, notably A/D 

converters and subsampling techniques. 

These activities are of very 

good to excellent scientific quality, and 

prepare them well to rise from a highly 

regarded RF and mixed signal IC group 

to one of the academic leaders in the 

field. 

The initial activities in printed paper 

electronics are quite unique in the 

world, which impressed the reviewers 

most. Though not yet very advanced, it 

is a new field where the investigators 

can be expected to make their mark scientifically, 

and create significant impact 

in industry. 

System Design Research at Lund 

University 

The reporting entity has been dedicated 

to circuit and system design excellence 

for many years. The reporting period coincided 

with the final phase of its funding 

but many activities have been carried 

out despite the retirement of the 

principal investigator and graduation of 

many doctoral students. 

The reporting entity has a pool of 

industrial sponsors, including such 

names as Ericsson, Ericsson Mobile 

Platform, Infineon and United Microelectronics 

Corporation, Taiwan, which have 

served to ensure that their activities are 

of very high importance for Sweden´s 

long-term competiveness. The quality of 

research carried out is on the whole excellent. 

Their standing in the academic 

world has been excellent also, although 

the reviewers regret that the funding 

ramp downwards during the reporting 

period may well hamper the future of 

Lund as one of the leaders in integrated 

circuits for communications. 

For the reporting period, circuits 

such as 26 GHz VCO and 60 GHz power 

amplifiers, beam-forming transmitter 

and novel LNA and mixer structures 

have been developed. Many patents 

have been filed by partner companies 

such as Ericsson, which testify the innovativeness 

of the inventions. 

Digital design also play an active 

part in the activities of the reporting entity 

during the reporting period. Embedded 

architectures have been developed, 

and realized in some cases in VLSI 

form, for various communications applications 

including MIMO and holographic 

imaging applications employing 

two-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform. 

The reviewers are pleased to learn 

that a new Industrial Excellence Centre 

for Systems on Chip has recently been 

funded and established. Hopefully this 

will carry the torch of the reporting entity 

forward, and cultivate coherence between 

the analogue, digital and embedded 

software activities in the future. 

System Design Research at Chalmers 

The exploitation of future scaled technology 

to achieve flexible computation 

with improved power efficiency, its application 

to portable devices such as 

video and image processing usable for 

multimedia, software design suitable 

for parallel and flexible processors, are 

extremely relevant to both communica-


27 

tions and computer industries in the 

SOC era. 

The relevance of the FlexSoc project 

is therefore outstanding. Towards the 

objectives of a flexible system on chip 

the reporting entity made excellent 

progress. The multi-processor architecture 

activities resulted in significant advances 

in power efficiency, execution 

bandwidth while maintaining programmability. 

A significant effort is made to 

improve embedded software for multi 

processor architecture, although the 

functional programming and software 

verification activities have not been 

geared towards the FlexSoc activities. 

The VLSI group has explored key areas 

of gate level design for low leakage 

and low power in sleep mode, as well 

as macro modeling of power consumption 

in circuits and memory. Integration 

of key components such as multipliers 

and data paths with flexible interconnects 

has been carried out to verify the 

accuracy of power modeling. Work has 

also been carried out on modeling of 

substrate noise generated by digital circuitry 

and their potential impact on analog 

circuits in a mixed signal environment. 

This effort is of very good quality 

since it is in the catch-up phase relative 

to the state-of-the-art. 

Overall the reporting entity at a relatively 

low level of funding has carried 

out work of very high importance for 

Sweden´s long-term competiveness with 

excellent scientific quality, which prepares 

them well to rise up to a leading 

position among the international academic 

research groups in the same 

area. 

System Design Research at Linköping 

University 

The reporting entity centers round the 

Stringent Research Center. The main 

themes of research, namely integrated 

circuits and systems for communications 

and microprocessors, and is of 

high importance for Sweden´s long-term 

competiveness. The researchers are 

well connected with leading companies 

such as Ericsson and Intel, and have 

been very active in spin-off companies 

that aim at a high potential for expansion. 

The quality of research is outstanding 

in the area high-performance 

circuits and excellent otherwise. They 

have a strong presence in the international 

research community, and are 

among a small number of academic research 

groupings in the world that are 

capable of making a regular contribution 

to the International Solid-State Circuits 

Conference, which is one of the strongest 

indicators that several of the sub 

groups in the Stringent center enjoy a 

status of high regard among their international 

academic peers. 

The Stringent Center is strong in digital 

circuits and systems. Highlight of digital 

processor design is a joint publication 

with world leading Intel on one of the 

latter’s latest microprocessors. The 

emergent activities in digital baseband 

modem, a field requiring substantial 

knowledge and understanding of wireless 

communications, have burst into 

the international arena with the group’s 

first publication on an embedded multipurpose 

DSP for DVB-H and other OFDM 

based application standards. Design 

and testing of embedded systems have 

their own place amongst their peers, with 

their share of the most influential papers 

at DATE in the past 10 years. 

Outside the traditional stronghold of 

digital design, the Center has recently 

expanded into RF circuits for reconfigurability, 

A/D & D/A converters etc, 

which is beginning to reach excellence. 

The reviewers also note positively that 

collaboration with material scientists on 

the use of TCAD for RF power amplifier 

design using novel devices such as SiC 

transistors, extends the center’s influence 

to their more science-centric colleagues.

28 International Evaluation of Swedish Research in Microelectronics

Appendix 

29 

Appendix 1. Evaluated project leaders and rapporteurs 

Research sub-area/Reporting Entity Rapporteur Project Leaders 

Silicon and Wide Bandgap Components 

Silicon Research at KTH Östling, Mikael Hallén, Anders 

Hellström, Per-Erik 

Linnarsson, Margareta 

Linnros, Jan 

Willén, Bo 

Zhang, Shi-Li 

Östling, Mikael 

Silicon Research at Uppsala University Katardjev, Ilia Berg, Sören 

Katardjev, Ilia 

Olsson, Jörgen 

Rydberg, Anders 

Silicon Carbide Research at Linköping Janzén, Erik Bergman, Peder 

University 

Henry, Anne 

Janzén, Erik 

Kakanakova, Anelia 

Son, NT 

Gallium Nitride Research at Linköping Monemar, Bo Buyanova, Irina 

University 

Chen, Weimin 

Darakchieva, Vanya 

Monemar, Bo 

Paskov, Plamen 

Silicon Research at Chalmers Engström, Olof Bengtsson, Stefan 

Engström, Olof 

Enoksson, Peter 

Lundgren, Per 

High Speed Electronics 

Microwaves Research at Chalmers Zirath, Herbert Grahn, Jan 

Rorsman, Niklas 

Starski, Piotr 

Swahn, Thomas 

Zirath, Herbert 

Terahertz Systems Research at Chalmers Stake, Jan Gevorgian, Spartak 

Stake, Jan



Nanoelectronics 

Nanotubes Research at Chalmers Campbell, Eleanor Campbell, Eleanor 

Gorelik, Leonid 

Kinaret, Jari 

Shekhter, Robert 

Svensson, Krister 

Quantum Electronics Research at Chalmers Delsing, Per Claeson, Tord 

Delsing, Per 

Kubatkin, Sergey 

Kuzmin, Leonid 

Lombardi, Filomena 

Wendin, Göran 

Nanostructure Physics Research at KTH Haviland, David Haviland, David 

Korenivski, Vladislav 

Spintronics Research at KTH Rao, K Venkat Belova, Lyubov 

Rao, K Venkat 

Nanometer Structures Research at Lund Samuelson, Lars Deppert, Knut 

University 

Montelius, Lars 

Pistol, Mats-Erik 

Samuelson, Lars 

Tegenfeldt, Jonas 

Thelander, Claes 

Wacker, Andreas 

Wallenberg, Reine 

Wernersson, Lars-Erik 

Xu, Hongqi 

Organic Electronics 

Organic Electronics Research at Linköping Inganäs, Olle Forchheimer, Robert 

University 

Inganäs, Olle 

Stafström, Sven 

Zozoulenko, Igor 

Paper Electronics Research at Linköping Berggren, Magnus Berggren, Magnus 

University 

Fahlman, Mats 

Lögdlund, Michael 

Photonics 

Photonic Communication Research Andrekson, Peter Andrekson, Peter 

at Chalmers 

Karlsson, Magnus 

Photonic Components Research at Willander, Magnus Hu, Q.H. 


Nour, Omer 

Willander, Magnus 

Zhao, Qiang Xing

Appendix 

31 


Quantum Optics Research at KTH Björk, Gunnar Björk, Gunnar 

Karlsson, Anders 

Photonic Devices Research at Chalmers Larsson, Anders Galt, Sheila 

Larsson, Anders 

Rudquist, Per 

Wang, Shumin 

Photonic and Microwave Engineering Thylén, Lars Anand, Srinivasan 


Berglind, Eilert 

Hammar, Mattias 

Jaskorzynska, Bozena 

Lourdudoss, Sebastian 

Marcinkevicius, Saulius 

Pasiskevicius, Valdas 

Qiu, Min 

Schatz, Richard 

Thylén, Lars 

Westergren, Urban 

Wosinski, Lech 

Photonic Materials Research at Chalmers Andersson, Thorvald Andersson, Thorvald 

System Design 

System Design Research at KTH Ismail, Mohammed Dubrova, Elena 

Ismail, Mohammed 

Rusu, Ana 

Signell, Svante 

Zheng, Li-Rong 

System Design Research at Lund Yuan, Jiren Nilsson, Peter 

University 

Sjöland, Henrik 

Yuan, Jiren 

Öwall, Viktor 

System Design Research at Chalmers Stenström, Per Hughes, John 

Jeppson, Kjell 

Larsson-Edefors, Per 

Stenström, Per 

System Design Research at Linköping Svensson, Christer Alvandpour, Atila 

University 

Dabrowski, Jerzy 

Eles, Petru 

Liu, Dake 

Peng, Zebo 

Svensson, Christer 

Wahab, Qamar-ul 

Wanhammar, Lars 

Vesterbacka, Mark


Appendix 2. Outline of background report 

Background report (rapporteur) 

Summary 

Summary of research within the reporting 

entity (to be used in the report by 

the evaluators). Links can be provided 

to one or more webpages where further 

background information of the respective 

research groups within the reporting 

entity can be found. 

Financial Support 

Financial support during the period 

2003-2007. Please complete the preentered 

data with other important 

grants (greater than SEK 100 000/year) 

were the rapporteur (or the project leader) 

is grant holder. Note: Project leaders 

have the possibility to provide such information 

in the background report under 

the tab “Other information and technical 

feedback” (see below). 

Scientific results and impact 

Field 1. Summarize the most significant 

scientific achievements and results for 

the period 2003-2007 from your reporting 

entity. 

Field 2. Summarize the most significant 

achievements for application/implementation 

of results 2003-2007 from 

your reporting entity (e.g. for industry or 

other sectors of society), eg. patents, 

licenses, spin-off companies. 

PhD/Lic 

PhD/Lic degrees awarded during 2003- 

2007 and ongoing PhD/Lic projects that 

started during 2003-2007 for your reporting 

entity. 

Infrastructure 

Please describe any larger investments 

(>SEK 2 M) in infrastructure during 

2003-2007 for your reporting entity. 

Are the infrastructure/equipment requirements 

fulfilled for your reporting 

entity 

Please list the type of expensive 

(>SEK 2 M) equipment/infrastructure 

that is needed for your reporting entity 

Cooperation and outreach activites 

Describe ongoing cooperation with other 

research groups and/or with industry, 

eg EU-projects. Write “none” if not applicable. 

Describe outreach activities related 

to research for your reporting entity. 

Future 

What are the future plans (1-5 years) of 

your reporting entity and most urgent 

needs 

Background report (project leader) 

Personal data 

Please provide personal data, contact 

and occupational information. 

Research area 

Choose one of the areas as primary 

area. If working within two or three areas 

choose secondary and tertiary areas. 

Publications 

Publications 2003-2007 applicable to 

microelectronics. It is possible to provide 

the 15 most important publications, 

the total number of articles, citations, 

H-index, etc. for publications 

during the period 2003-2007. A web address 

to a complete list of publications 

can also be provided. 

Scientific results 

Summarize your most significant scientific 

achievements and results for the 

period 2003-2007, 

Max 1 page. Please note that the 

broad aspects of the research within 

the whole reporting entity is submitted 

by the rapporteur of your reporting entity. 

Comments on research in Sweden 

(Microelectronics) 

Strengths and weaknesses of Swedish 

research in, or close to, your own major 

area/s. 

Other comments (e.g. with reference 

to SSF, VR or Vinnova). 

Other information and technical 

feedback 

Other information, e.g. grants greater 

than SEK 100 000/year during 2003- 

2007 from funding sources other than 

VR, SSF and Vinnova. Project leaders 

are asked to contact their respective 

rapporteur to make sure that this additional 

information is transferred to the 

financial support section of the report. 

Technical feedback relating to the 

webform or its format, submission, etc.

Appendix 

33 

Appendix 3. Executive Summaries provided by the Rapporteurs 

Silicon and Wide Bandgap 

Components 

Silicon Research at KTH 

We report on 17 graduated PhD students 

and a total of 28 involved students 

over the reporting period. A very 

large number of peer-reviewed journal 

papers and reviewed conference contributions 

have been published. A major 

silicon nanoelectronics fabrication platform 

was established. The silicon technology 

has enabled cross-disciplinary 

work with the biotechnology area. 

Novel silicon nanowire structures 

were demonstrated as sensors for detection 

of DNA and other biomolecules. 

Nanowire structures are especially interesting 

due to their enhanced sensitivity. 

Studies to advance porous silicon by 

RIE have lead to a spin-out company 

Scint-X, developing highly sensitive X-ray 

detectors. Carbon nanotubes were 

studied and a novel approach for controllable 

site-selective assembly was 

established by means of an AC dielectrophoreses 

allowing efficient manipulation 

of semiconducting single wall CNTs. 

The DNA sensor activity has lead to a 

patent proposal and is under evaluation 

for a commercialization grant. For the 

SiC device research projects breakthrough 

results were achieved by the 

publication of the first bipolar transistor 

to demonstrate high breakdown voltage 

and having a high current gain. The research 

enabled a spin-out of a new 

company TranSiC, producing a discrete 

SiC bipolar transistor and modules. The 

funded research areas have been successful 

in establishing a leading experimental 

foundation for the future needs 

in the nanoelectronics area globally 

Silicon Research at Uppsala University 

In a nutshell the backbone of the research 

of this entity can be summarized 

as synthesis of electronic materials on 

the one hand as well as modelling, design, 

fabrication and characterization of 

discrete electronic components on the 

other. The first category includes: 

a) Thin piezoelectric films (I.Katardjiev) 

b) Synthesis of CIGS and related materials 

for solar cells (Marika Edoff) 

c) SOI materials (J.Olsson) 

d) Gate stack materials (J.Olsson) 

e) Ferroelectric materials (I.Katardjiev) 

The largest materials research activities 

are CIGS and thin piezoelectric films. 

The CIGS activity, however, despite being 

a world leader in CIGS solar cells, is 

not included in this evaluation due to its 

main funding coming from the Department 

of Energy. In this category is also 

the world leading research of S.Berg 

who has developed a fundamental description 

of sputter PVD processes 

which expertise is then applied to all 

materials research within the entity. 

The second group of activities includes 

a) High power, high frequency LDMOS 

transistors (J.Olsson) 

b) Solar cell modules (M.Edoff) 

c) Microwave electro-acoustic components 

such as resonators, filters, 

oscillators, etc (I.Katardjiev) 

d) Physical and biochemical electroacoustic 

sensors (I.Katardjiev) 

e) Components on hybrid Si/SiC substrates 

(J.Olsson) 

f) Integrated antennas (A.Rydberg) 

In all of the activities above the project 

leaders hold leading positions in their 

respective areas in the world. 

Silicon Carbide Research at Linköping 

University 

We are focused on growth and characterization 

of wide bandgap semiconductors, 

primarily SiC, GaN, AlGaN and AlN. 

We develop new growth techniques, like 

chloride-based SiC growth and hot-wall 

MOCVD growth of III-nitrides, often in 

collaboration with industry. We characterize 

our grown wafer as feedback to 

the growth but also as a help to understand 

device property variations for devices 

from the same wafer. We also do 

fundamental defect physics, which has 

been very helpful in understanding the 

properties of semi-insulating SiC substrates. 

The driving forces for our materials 

research have been high-voltage, 

SiC power devices (thick low-doped epitaxial 

layers with excellent morphology, 

fast epitaxial growth, long carrier lifetime, 

bipolar degradation) and high-power, 

high-frequency devices (AlGaN/GaN 

HEMT structures, large-area uniformity, 

transport properties of the 2DEG, semiinsulating 

buffer layer, semi-insulating 

SiC substrates, intrinsic defects). 

During the next 5 years we plan to 

re-enter into the SiC bulk growth field, 

this time using chlorinated precursors 

in a HTCVD process and extend our IIInitride 

activities into the high-power, 

deep-UV emission area but still keep 

our interest for high-voltage and highfrequency 

devices. As before we will


only do the materials research and collaborate 

with groups at Chalmers for 

design, processing and evaluation of 

high-frequency and deep-UV emission 

devices and with Acreo for high-voltage, 

power devices. 

Gallium Nitride Research at Linköping 

University 

The research in this environment (the 

Materials Science Division at IFM) is focused 

on experimental development of 

growth techniques for wide bandgap 

semiconductors and experimental studies 

of material properties related to 

electronic and optical applications. We 

are well equipped with about 50 laboratories 

for structural, optical, electrical, 

magnetic studies etc, mostly in clean 

room environment. The research is performed 

in a well developed international 

collaboration for all projects. The 

projects discussed here concern four 

categories of materials: III-nitrides, 

magnetic semiconductor structures, SiC 

and III-V-nitrides, all internationally attractive 

areas presently. 

The growth work included here concerns 

development of bulk GaN boules 

and wafers based on HVPE technology. 

We have succeeded in growing several 

mm thick boules of GaN with a dislocation 

density < 10 6 cm –2 . Additional studies 

of material properties include bulk 

GaN, InGaN- and AlGaN-related QWs 

and superlattices, nonpolar epilayers, 

InN and AlInN. The magnetic structures 

studied include InGaN/GaMnN, 

ZnMgSe/ZnCdSe, and ZnO related 

structures. Mechanisms for spin injection, 

spin transfer and spin detection in 

these structures have been elucidated. 

Intrinsic defects in SiC have been identified. 

Their role for the electronic properties 

have been clarified. The III-V-N 

materials include GaInNP and GaInNAs 

with related QW structures. Band structure, 

defects, and H passivation have 

been studied in detail. 

Silicon Research at Chalmers 

The research activities at Chalmers, reported 

here, arise from two different research 

laboratories at the Department 

of Microtechnology and NanoScience 

(MC2). Enoksson, Lundgren and Bengtsson 

(also Vice Rector of Chalmers) belong 

to the BioNanoSystems Laboratory, 

while Engström is part of the 

Laboratory of Physical Electronics. 

Spanning across an area including thermal 

wafer bonding, nanogaps for molecular 

attachment, carbon nanotubes 

for integration into CMOS technology 

and for AFM/TEM applications, MEMS 

based sensors, biodetectors, quantum 

dots, silicon nanowires and high-k-dielectrics, 

it seems reasonable that this 

collected knowledge should be more alloyed 

than it is presently. As can be 

seen below, the activities by Bengtsson, 

Lundgren and Enoksson have 

links, while Engström’s research has 

been separate from those efforts as he 

restarted this kind of activities in 2003 

after a 7 years period of managerial 

work at Chalmers. Discussions are ongoing 

to find ways of a closer collaboration 

between silicon related works going 

on at MC2. (See also reports from Johan 

Liu and Göran Wendin.) At the hearing 

in April, results from these measures 

will be available. 

High Speed Electronics 

Microwaves Research at Chalmers 

Our research is focused on electronic 

components and circuits for applications 

from low GHz to THz frequencies utilizing 

semiconductor technologies. We are 

founded to approximately 80 % by external 

research agencies such as SSF, Vinnova, 

VR, FMV, SNSB, FOI, ESTEC, EU 

etc and, in addition, industry. We are 

running two centres of excellence, namely 

the Vinnova ”GHz-Centre”, and the 

SSF Strategic Research Centre in High 

Speed Electronics and Photonics. Our 

experimental facilities include a very well 

equipped clean room facility, and several 

microwave and millimeterwave measurement 

labs. Many of our research 

projects are financed and performed together 

with the industry. 

Our research include in most cases 

device simulation, fabrication, characterization, 

modelling, and circuit design. 

Our in house processes include Indium 

Phosphide based High Electron Mobility 

Transistors (HEMTs) for low noise and 

low power applications at frequencies 

from less then 1 GHz to several hundreds 

of GHz. For high power applications, 

we are investigating wide-bandgap 

(WBG) semiconductors such as 

Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride 

(GaN). At the moment SiC MESFETs, 

SiC-MOSFETs, SiC diodes, and AlGan- 

GaN HEMTs are fabricated in our clean 

room. We are also developing MMICs 

(Microwave Monolithic Integrated Circuits) 

based on these device and external 

foundry processes. The process include 

airbridge, via-hole, 

overlay-capacitor, spiral inductance, 

thin-film resistor and semiconductor resistor. 

Terahertz Systems Research 

at Chalmers 

Our research at the Physical Electronics 

Laboratory is focused on new materials, 

devices and sub-systems for applications 

in the frequency range 10 GHz – 

10 THz or the corresponding wavelength 

range 30 µm – 3 cm. This is an emerging 

part of the electromagnetic spectrum 

where optical and microwave techniques 

meet.

Appendix 

35 

We fabricate novel devices in our 

state-of-the-art Nanofabrication facility 

and evaluate these in various circuit 

demonstrators. We carry out research 

on new materials for active and passive 

circuits. Our research finds applications 

in receivers and transmitters for future 

radar sensors, THz-imaging systems, 

radio astronomy and remote sensing, 

and future wireless communication systems. 

We take advantage of advanced CAE 

tools and a top-class microwave and terahertz 

characterisation facility. 

Nanoelectronics 

Nanotubes Research at Chalmers 

The carbon nanotube research in Sweden 

is very much concentrated in 

Gothenburg where there are a number 

of experimental and theoretical activities. 

The carbon nanotube related research 

in Gothenburg within the area of 

microelectronics has focused on the 

study of nanoelectromechanical devices. 

This has ranged from very fundamental 

theoretical studies of quantum 

mechanical effects in suspended nanotubes 

to fundamental studies of transport 

(both electronic and mass) in 

individual nanotubes and more applications-oriented 

studies of nanotubebased 

NEMS on chip. The theoretical 

and experimental work is carried out in 

close collaboration and provides a fruitful 

cross-fertilisation of ideas. The study 

of individual nanotubes is essential to 

develop a clear understanding of the 

properties and potential of nanotubebased 

devices. Much of the research 

activity has concentrated on developing 

ways to grow and manipulate nantotubes 

to allow the controlled fabrication 

of devices on-chip. The further development 

of tools to manipulate and analyse 

individual nanotubes has also been 

a major activity. The combination of 

scanning probe microscopy and TEM 

provides an ideal tool for manipulating 

and studying mechanical and electrical 

properties of individual nanotubes 

Quantum Electronics Research at 

Chalmers 

The microelectronics research reported 

here addresses nano- and quantum-devices 

and can be divided into 5 subareas: 

• Single electron devices and qubits 

(Delsing et al) 

• Molecular electronics (Kubatkin et 

al) 

• High Tc devices (Lombardi/Claeson 

et al) 

• THz-Bolometers (Kuzmin et al) 

• Theory (Wendin et al) 

We study fundamental questions about 

how nanodevices can be described, fabricated, 

and utilized. In many cases we 

operate at low temperatures and with 

superconducting devices. Applied 

projects relate to very sensitive measurement 

methods and sensors. 

A very important infrastructure for our 

research is the well equipped nano fabrication 

laboratory at MC2. This gives 

us a clear advantage compared to other 

groups. 

We have for many years been well 

supported by SSF, but we can see that 

the support from SSF is decreasing. 

Fortunately, with a new Linné grant from 

VR, we have been able to continue at 

approximately the same level. 

During the reporting period our environment 

has produced 120 scientific 

papers of which 2 in Nature, 1 in Science, 

10 in PRL, 2 in NanoLetters and 

1 in Nature Physics. 

It is important to note that substantial 

parts of the NANODEV centre are 

reported elsewhere. 

The activities of Shekhter, Gorelik, 

and Jonson are reported by Campbell 

The activities of Bengtsson, Enoksson 

and Engström are reported by Engström 

The activities of Haviland are reported 

by himself 

Nanostructure Physics Research 

at KTH 

Nanostructure physics at KTH is a 

group consisting of two professors, one 

technician (50 %) and typically 1-2 postdocs, 

5-7 Graduate students, and about 

the same number of undergraduate 

project workers annually. We work on a 

broad spectrum of research, from applied 

microelectronics with commercial 

companies, to more fundamental, long 

term projects at the boarder between 

physics, biology and microelectronics. 

We have built up first class fabrication 

and measurement facilities, whose 

functionality has been well proven by 

the large number of students from other 

groups who rely on our open laboratory 

facilities. Our own research with Spintronics 

and with micro resonators has 

generated IP which we are presently developing. 

We have made many important 

scientific contributions to our fields 

of research. Highlights for the period 

2003-2007 are: 

• 11 letter publications in “high impact” 

journals, e.g. PRL, APL, Nanoletters, 

JACS. 

• 23 longer publications in refereed 

scientific Journals. 

• 15 invited talks at international conferences 

and workshops. 

• 35+ invited seminars or department 

colloquium and visits. 

• 6 PhD students graduated, 5 working 

in Swedish High Tech industry. 

• 3 patents


Nanometer Structures Research 

at Lund University 

We have in the last five years been able 

to position ourselves as one of the 

leading laboratories in the fields of 

semiconductor growth (epitaxy), in advanced 

materials characterization, in 

basic device physics, and have applied 

this to the development of completely 

novel device and circuit concepts, in 

electronics as well as in opto-electronics. 

This is illustrated by our strong 

presence in leading international conferences 

(> 150 invited/plenary talks) and 

in us leading the primary EU-project in 

the field of “Emerging Nanoelectronics”. 

A strong focus has been on semiconductor 

nanowires from the point of view 

of understanding growth mechanisms 

and how this understanding enables superior 

device fabrication. Of special importance 

has been our break-through in 

controlling the formation of highly perfect 

and atomically abrupt hetero-structures 

within III-V nanowires, by which 

many kinds of quantum- and nanobased 

devices have been demonstrated 

within our entity, such as single-electron 

devices and memories, resonant 

tunnelling devices, wrap-gated field-effect 

transistors, quantum-dot emitters 

and light-emitting nanowire structures 

for LEDs in general. We have also made 

significant progress in the fields of 

nano-mechanics and nano-fluidics, in 

both case primarily of relevance for bioapplications. 

Organic Electronics 

Organic Electronics Research at 


We have developed organic nanoelectronics 

through the use of microfluidic 

methods for assembly of micro-nanostructures, 

and by using misfolded protein 

fibres in the form of amyloid, as a 

template for assembly of semiconducting, 

luminescent or metallic polymers. 

Device functions have been demonstrated 

with these materials, also with 

enhancement of performance, in light 

emitting diodes with included amyloid. 

The use of photochromic molecules in 

semiconducting polymer blends allow 

light manipulation of charge transport 

through diodes. Detailed studies of a 

class of devices, diodes exhibiting electrical 

memory functions, has demonstrated 

the reversible formation and destruction 

of metallic shorts through 

such devices, casting doubt on existing 

models of electrical memory devices. 

We have enhanced the functions of 

polymer solar cells by enhancing light 

incoupling. The three methods to enhance 

light absorption, through nanostructured 

electrodes giving photon-plasmon 

coupling, through microlenses 

focusing and trapping light, and through 

folded reflective and tandem solar cells 

on the milliscale, are all operational, 

but the folded cells give the highest increase 

of efficiency, by 1.8 times. With 

our best materials, we reach single cell 

efficiencies of 4 %, which may enable 

us to fold tandem cells to arrive at 7 % 

efficiency (not yet demonstrated). 

Paper Electronics Research at 


The activities in the Organic Electronics 

group, at LiU, and at Acreo, in Norrköping, 

are conducted in the spirit of 

developing organic electronic devises 

including electrons, molecules and liquids 

as the signal carriers for novel applications 

targeting printed electronics 

and bioelectronics. 

Printed electronics: Our vision is to 

convert manufacturing of electronics 

from a batch-based process technology 

to a reel-to-reel manufacturing technology, 

similar to how we print on paper today. 

To achieve this we need to explore 

electronic materials that can be processed 

from solutions and our choice is 

organic electronic materials. On the application 

side, we are exploring using 

printed electronics primarily on paper 

products, specifically on packages, media 

surfaces and labels. 

Bioelectronics: Our vision is to 

bridge the gap in between manmade 

electronics and biology using organic 

electronic devices that can perform signal 

processing of bio-molecules as well 

as electrons. In this context, we presently 

develop biochemical circuits that 

can translate electronic signals into biological 

equivalences in order to regulate 

and record signalling in biology. We particularly 

focus on the area of electronic 

control of intracellular signalling, stem 

cell differentiation and neuronal signalling. 

Photonics 

Photonic Communication Research 

at Chalmers 

Our research in fibre optics addresses 

three main areas: High-capacity and 

high spectral efficiency digital communications, 

all-optical functionalities, and 

microwave photonics. In the reporting 

period we have presented about 25 invited 

papers at leading events, 

launched one spin-off company, and 

produced 6 PhDs. We have recovered 

from the telecom bubble and see significant 

new opportunities of growth from 

synergies with other groups at Chalmers, 

within EU project, as well as outside 

Europe. We foresee research on 

co-optimization of optics, electronics, 

and algorithms as a new paradigm shift 

for next generation optical networking. 

On a more fundamental level, as an ex-

Appendix 

37 

ample, we envision very intriguing performance 

and applications of phasesensitive 

optical parametric amplifier 

(for example the potential for 0 dB 

noise figure). Our test and measurement 

laboratory has been upgraded 

substantially with specific grants 

amounting to SEK 6.5 M, such that it 

now has the highest international standard. 

This has indirectly contributed to 

our success in the recent Photonics EU- 

FP7 call where we ranked 1 (!) out of 

the 134 STREP submissions as well as 

facilitating us to become an attractive 

partner also outside Europe. An example 

is our recently established significant 

joint research activity with UC San 

Diego, USA, and we expect to strengthen 

this. 

Photonic Components Research at 


The goals with this program was to 

make device quality ZnO materials, 

mainly nanorods, for optical applications, 

LEDs and lasers, grown on silicon 

substrates. This besides the growth on 

other single crystal substrates likes 

sapphire, SiC. In addition, amorphous 

substrates e.g. SiO 2 

, glass etc are all of 

interests, adding to that the immense 

interest of flexible substrates, e.g. plastic 

electronics. The second task is to 

characterize all the grown nano-rods to 

insure the suitability of these nanorods 

for optical application. In addition demonstration 

of new photonic devices 

based on ZnO nanorods was the final 

stage of the experimental planned work. 

As a spin off effect it is also expected 

to come out some new physics which 

can be used for applications. Zinc oxide 

was chosen due to its unique properties 

as extremely high exciton binding 

energy, strong photon exciton coupling, 

and possibility to grow crystalline ZnO 

on different lattice mismatched or 

amorphous substrates by catalytic 

growth. 

All the above goals have been 

achieved as demonstrated through publications 

and/or patents. 

Quantum Optics Research at KTH 

The reporting entity consists of two senior 

researchers, Profs. Gunnar Björk 

(rapporteur) and Anders Karlsson. 

The field of research is quantum information 

(in particular quantum key 

distribution) and quantum optics (in particular 

applications of entanglement 

and its characterization). Notable results 

is the early demonstration of a full 

plug-and-play quantum cryptography 

system transmitting over 60 km of optical 

fibre at the standard telecom wavelength 

of 1.55 micrometer, the demonstration 

of non-locality of a single 

photon, the development of periodically 

poled non-linear crystals (KTP) for the 

efficient generation of photon-pairs, and 

methods for a simple estimation of bipartite 

entanglement using only local 

measurements. The research has been 

both of theoretical and of experimental 

nature. 

The total research grants awarded 

during the period is roughly SEK 32 M 

(SEK 18 M SSF, SEK 7.1 M VR, SEK 6.4 

M EU, SEK 0.8 M STINT). 

During the period four PhD theses 

have been awarded in the area, a fifth 

is almost completed, and a sixth is 

about half-way. 

The research has resulted in 39 papers 

in peer reviewed international journals 

and 19 invited talks at international 

conferences. 

Photonic Devices Research at 

Chalmers 

Optoelectronics: 

Major achievements in GaAs-based VC- 

SELs at 850 and 1300 nm, including: 

1) a comprehensive model for VCSEL 

design and analysis, 2) a superior technique 

for mode and polarization control, 

resulting in record high single mode 

power, 3) high speed VCSELs for optical 

communication links. 

Optically pumped long wavelength 

(1550 nm) semiconductor disk lasers 

were developed using the InP material 

system. Record high output power, combined 

with excellent beam quality was 

obtained. Short, high power pulses 

were generated at high repetition rates 

using mode-locking. 

Dilute nitride lasers on GaAs were 

developed for high speed, high temperature 

operation. GaInNAs lasers emitting 

at 1.3 µm exhibited record low threshold 

currents with very small temperature 

dependence and record modulation 

bandwidths. Operation at high bit rates 

at elevated temperatures was demonstrated. 

Metamorphic long wavelength In- 

GaAs lasers on GaAs were demonstrated, 

including record performance at 1.3 

µm and the first 1.55 µm laser. 

Optics: 

New types of photonic analog-to-digital 

converters (ADCs) were successfully 

demonstrated, including a spectrometer 

based ADC, an interferometer based 

ADC, and a photonic time-stretcher. 

Liquid crystals: 

Leading work on ferro- and antiferroelectric 

liquid crystals (LCs) with major 

achievements in fundamental physics 

(e.g. surface interactions) and device 

physics (e.g. multi-level phase and amplitude 

modulation and ultra-sensitive 

detection). 

Photonic and Microwave Engineering 


The entity research comprises a


number of fields, some of which at the 

international forefront. The research 

has largely been renewed, in response 

to emerging novel fields and visions of 

project leaders, and is well in tune with 

international mainstream, evidenced by 

the many invited papers and talks. This 

advantageous situation is, especially 

for semiconductor material and device 

technology, a result of visionary funding 

starting in the mid 70s. This legacy is in 

danger of being squandered. Photonics 

is a prioritized area in EU (evidenced by 

Photonics21) and research within the 

entity covers a number of the areas in 

the Photonics21 strategy document: Integrated 

photonics, where we have a 

long track record. This field includes 

photonic crystals, where state of the art 

experimental and theory work has been 

accomplished as well as state of the art 

Si integrated photonics technology and 

the new projects on plasmonics. Linked 

to these are projects on material technology 

such as heteroepitaxi of InP on 

Si and state of the art hydride VPE. 

Here are also the rather recent metamaterial 

research and functional materials 

with tailored linear and nonlinear 

properties for photonics linking several 

projects. VCSEL 1.3 µm technology and 

high speed electroabsorbtion modulators 

are other areas in the international 

forefront. Basic research on dynamics 

and coherence properties in low dimensional 

semiconductors (relevant in its 

own right) can give new functionality to 

integrated photonics. 

Photonic Materials Research at 

Chalmers 

The research unit consists of a group 

that moved from the department of 

physic to MC2 a few years ago. 

The group has two commercial MBEsystems 

for III-V growth and characterisation 

of layers. This characterisation 

equipment is Hall effect, PL (not working) 

and equipment for CV- and IV-measurements. 

We also has access to the 

characterisation in the MC2 clean room 

(XRD and AFM). 

The second part is research on molecule 

layers grown by thermal evaporation. 

This started about 5 years ago. We 

use a low vacuum evaporation system 

were know-how from the MBE-technology 

has been used. One of the MBE-chambers 

has an organic UHV-chamber connected 

but we have no money to run it 

The group has consisted of typically 

ten persons. The group size has slowly 

decreased (with reduction of financial resources) 

and is presently only three persons 

(plus 2-4 master students). 

System Design 

System Design Research at KTH 

The reporting entity conducts cutting 

edge research in micro-/nano-electronic 

systems spanning a wide range of topics 

carefully chosen to contribute to areas 

of strategic interest to Swedish industry 

and to achieve the mission of 

KTH as a leading world class research 

institute. Over the reporting period of 

interest, the entity continued the tradition 

of being a world leader and one of 

the first groups in Europe, indeed the 

world, to initiate and lead research in 

the area of: 

1) Low power CMOS radio and mixed 

signal design for convergent wireless 

handhelds 

2) Low power digital design, chip communication 

and interconnect design 

techniques for system- and networkon-chip 

3) EDA tools development for design 

space exploration and optimization 

of RF and mixed signal circuits and 

systems 

4) System-in-package and integrated 

technologies for intelligent paper 

and for wearable medical devices 

The work strikes a good balance theory 

and practice. One application is development 

of low power small form factor 

chipsets for high volume low cost cognitive 

radios (SDRs) and wireless systems 

(cellular,WLAN/WiMAX, RFID, etc.), from 

end-to-end, i.e. RF, digital baseband/ 

MAC as well as the front end passives. 

The methodologies are applied to wireline 

communications, multimedia, intelligent 

paper technology and medical applications. 

The work contributes to 

robust nano-scale integration, digitally 

programmable/configurable RF and 

mixed signal IPs and statistical design 

for yield enhancement. 

System Design Research at Lund 

University 

CCCD is dedicated to circuit and system-on-chip 

design for future wireless 

communications. When technology is 

scaled down, low supply voltage poses 

a greatly challenge to receiver dynamic 

range, linearity and transmitter output 

power. For ADC and DAC, sampling 

accuracy, dynamic range, speed, resolution 

and glitch are getting more troublesome. 

In digital domain, high processing 

speed and capability, low leakage, 

high efficiency, low cost and low switching 

noise are most wanted. In addition, 

high flexibility and low digital-to-analog 

interference are also extremely important. 

The projects of CCCD research program 

are therefore mainly focused on 

the above topics (not limited to), such 

as: P1-Monolithic Transceivers (linearization, 

low voltage, low cost, adaptive 

and multiple antenna, beam forming 

etc.); P2-Mixed Signal Circuit Design 

(high speed and wide dynamic range

Appendix 

39 

ADC, low glitch and low image interpolation 

DAC, silent CMOS circuits etc); P3- 

Digital Building Blocks for Wireless Systems 

(distributed asynchronous custom 

DSP-systems, algorithm/HW co-design, 

algorithms for adaptive antenna etc.); 

P6-Flexible Terminal for Wireless Systems 

(reconfigurable RF front-end and 

ADC, flexible coding/decoding and 

baseband circuitry, hardware for MIMO 

etc.). Besides, P4-Digital Holographic 

Imaging, P5-Medical Implantable Devices, 

P7-Hardware control of HCCI 

Combustion Engines and P8-Architectures 

for Video and Image based Systems 

are dedicated to respective areas 

of CCCD partners. 

System Design Research at Chalmers 

At the architecture level, a major 

achievement has been the establishment 

of the new architectural framework 

known as FlexSoC. Other important 

achievements are novel 

applications of compression techniques 

to reduce the interconnect bandwidth 

and the amount of memory resources in 

computer systems. The group has also 

contributed with new design space exploration 

techniques to assess energy 

efficiency in complex systems with cooperating 

hardware and software. 

At the circuit level, important results 

include new low-power techniques for 

sleep-mode circuits, scalable multipliers 

with logarithmic depth with regular 

layouts, twin-precision datapath units, 

and flexible datapath interconnects. 

Contributions have also been made to 

macro modelling of power dissipation. 

To this end, the group has contributed 

with macro modelling methods for memory 

and datapath blocks to more accurately 

estimate the power being dissipated. 

Finally, in the field of substrate 

noise, we have extended a lot of the 

theories that were previously developed 

for spreading resistance analysis and to 

make it useful for analysing how contacts 

on the surface of a silicon chip interfere 

with each other. Accurate compact 

substrate models which can 

predict the noise coupling of integrated 

circuits are presented. A physics-based 

modelling approach has been employed 

to yield scalable and predictive three 

dimensional models. 

System Design Research at Linköping 

University 

This reporting entity includes Microelectronic 

Devices and Circuit research at 

the departments of Electrical Engineering, 

Computer and Information Science, 

and Physics, Chemistry and Biology at 

Linköping University. 

Most of these activities are organized 

in Stringent Research Centre, with 

9 professors and 5 associate professors. 

During 2003-2007 we estimate 

that we contributed about 0.5 % of 

world research in our field, and we examined 

31 PhD’s, of which 77 % now 

work in industry. 3 spin-off companies 

were funded during the period, and we 

developed cooperation with many companies 

in Sweden, Europe and US. 

Key research fields are High performance 

and low power analog and digital 

circuit techniques for processors 

and wireless systems; Design, efficient 

implementation and new applications of 

digital filters; Efficient processor architectures 

for networking, wireless baseband 

and media; Design methods, testing 

and optimization of multicore 

systems; and New methods for efficient 

device simulation.


Appendix 4. Assessment criteria 

Assessment for scientific quality 

Outstanding 

World leading research; of great international interest with broad impact and with publications in internationally leading 

journals. 

Excellent 

Research at a very high international level; of international interest with impact within its field and with publications 

in internationally leading journals. 

Very good 

Internationally recognized research; with publications in internationally well known journals. 

Good 

Research that is of good international standard and partially published in well-known international journals. 

Insufficient 

Research of low international standard. 

Grades for strategic relevance – importance for Sweden’s long term competiveness 

Very high 

High 

Medium 

Low

Appendix 

41 

Appendix 5. Financial support from VR, SSF and Vinnova 

(2003–2007) 

Reporting Entity Main grant holder Source Title amount (SEK) Duration 

Silicon Research at KTH Östling Mikael SSF High Frequency silicon subproject 25 000 000 2000-2005 

Östling Mikael SSF Nano Electronic MOSFETs 4 500 000 2006-2008 

Östling Mikael VINNOVA MEDEA+ T206 SOI CMOS for low power, 1 000 000 2003-2004 

2002-2005, SOI CMOS för lågeffekt och 

radiofrekvenstillämpningar, 2003-00023 

Östling Mikael VINNOVA Silicon based devices and circuits for RF/Wireless 5 700 000 2002-2006 

Domeij Martin VINNOVA Silicon Carbide Power Devices and Modules for 3 000 000 2006-2009 

Medium and High Voltage 

Domeij Martin VR Silicon carbide bipolar junction transistors for 2 025 000 2007-2009 

energy efficient power electronic systems 

Hallén Anders VR Implantation Technology for Wide Bandgap 2 030 000 2004-2006 

Semiconductors 

Linnarsson Margareta VR Diffusion mechanisms for dopants in compound 2 030 000 2003-2005 

semiconductors 

Linnros Jan VR ’Recombination enhanced phenomena in SiC: 2 000 000 2003-2005 

Fundamentals and applications’, 

Linnros Jan VR Synthesis and properties of single luminescent 2 030 000 2003-2005 

Si quantum dots 

Linnros Jan VR Synthesis and properties of silicon quantum dots 2 250 000 2006-2008 

and nanowires 

Willén Bo VR Advanced Collector Design of InP-HBTs for 1 950 000 2002-2004 

160-Gb/s Communication System Applications 

Zhang Shi-Li VR Fundamental aspects of electrical contact between 2 020 000 2003-2005 

carbon nanotubes (CNT) and transition metals for 

CNT-based nanoelectronics 

Zhang Shi-Li VR Functionalization of carbon nanotubes for 1 950 000 2006-2008 

controllable fabrication of field-effect transistors 

and electric biosensors 

Bakowski Mietek VR New dielectric and semi-insulating materials for 2 730 000 2002-2005 

advanced wide bandgap devices 

Silicon Research at Uppsala Hultman Lars/ SSF Materials Science and Surface Engineering (MS2E) 45 000 000 2006-2010 

University 

Katardjiev Ilja/ 

Berg Sören/etc 

Olsson Jörgen SSF NEMO – Nano Electronic MOSFETs 1 000 000 2006-2007 

Katardjev Ilia SSF Electro-acoustic applications 15 000 000 2003-2007 

Olsson Jörgen SSF High Frequency silicon subproject 12 840 000 2000-2005 

Hultman Lars/ 

Katardjiev Ilja/ 

Berg Sören/etc SSF Low temperature synthesis of thin films 33 000 000 2000-2005 

Rydberg Anders SSF Antenna integrated circuit implementation 700 000 2003-2003 

techniques for future software radio 

Berg Sören VINNOVA SiC-Si hybride substrates 1 500 000 2005-2006 

Olsson Jörgen VINNOVA Efficiency and non-linear effects for RF-power devices 630 000 2005-2006 

Gunningberg Per/ VINNOVA Wireless Sensor Networks (Center of Excellence) 70 000 000 2007-2016 

Katardjiev Ilia/ 

Rydberg Anders/etc 

Katardjiev Ilia VINNOVA Real time sensing artificial dog’s nose 4 800 000 2003-2005 

Olsson Jörgen VINNOVA Si/SiC hybrid substrate and components 4 000 000 2006-2008 

Katardjiev Ilia/ VR Detection of protein, virus and bacteria 2 100 000 2005-2009 

Attana AB



Katardjiev Ilia/ VR Frequency modulated pressure sensor for 1 720 000 2007-2010 

Radi Medical in-vivo measurements 

Olsson Jörgen VR Theoretical Analysis and Development of 2 030 000 2003-2005 

SOI double-gate (DG) and gate-all-around (GAA) 

MOS Transistors 

Rydberg Anders VR Small Adaptive High Efficiency Integrated 3D 2 200 000 2007-2009 

Antennas for Wireless Sensor Networks 

Rydberg Anders VR Hybrid photonic-antennna-matrix for 5 and 17 GHz 1 828 000 2003-2006 

Rydberg Anders VR Small Adaptive High Efficiency Integrated 3D 2 229 000 2007-2009 

Antennas for Wireless Sensor Networks 

Silicon Carbide Research Janzén Erik SSF SiC Materials 20 000 000 2003-2007 

at Linköping University Janzén Erik VR Properties of high-purity SiC 1 950 000 2002-2004 

Janzén Erik VR Bulk growth of GaN 3 925 000 2005-2007 

Bergman, Peder VR Understanding, characterisation and 2 100 000 2003-2005 

reduction of dislocations in SiC. 

Kakanakova Anelia VR Epitaxial Growth of GaN and related alloys 2 980 000 2003-2006 

in a hot-wall MOCVD reactor 

Gallium Nitride Research Monemar Bo VR III-nitrides, hydride CVD growth and physical 1 950 000 2002-2004 

at Linköping University 

properties 

Monemar Bo VR Basic semiconductor physics 2 830 000 2003-2005 

Monemar Bo VR Growth of bulk GaN with HVPE 670 000 2004 

Buyanova Irina VR New photonic material based on nitrogen 1 950 000 2002-2004 

containing III-V ternary and quaternary alloys 

Buyanova Irina VR New photonic materials based on nitrogen containing 1 960 000 2005-2007 

III-V ternary and quaternary allosy 

Chen Weimin VR Physics of spintronic of semiconductor and 1 950 000 2005-2007 

nanostructures 

Chen Weimin VR Defect Spectroscopy of silicon carbide 2 030 000 2003-2005 

Chen Weimin VR Physics of semiconductor spintronic materials 2 100 000 2005-2007 

and nanostructures 

Darakchieva Vanya VR Fysik av III-Nitrid multi functional materials and low 3 370 000 2006-2009 

dimensionals structures 

Paskov Plamen VR GaN/AlGaN nanostructures for infrared optoelectronic 1 780 000 2006-2008 

applications 

Janzen Erik VR Bulk Growth of GaN 3 425 000 2005-2007 

Janzen Erik VR Bulk Growth of GaN 500 000 2006-2007 

Silicon Research at Enoksson Peter SSF Beam steering 4 000 000 2003-2006 

Chalmers Enoksson Peter SSF NanoDev 900 000 2003-2007 

Engström Olof SSF NanoDev 900 000 2003-2007 

Enoksson Peter SSF Caramel 900 000 2003-2007 

Engström Olof SSF High Frequency silicon subproject 1 900 000 2006-2008 

Enoksson Peter VINNOVA Intellisense Nordic 1 800 000 2004-2007 

Enoksson Peter VINNOVA Vinnova SLM 3 000 000 2003-2007 

Lundgren Per VR A Silicon Interface to Molecular Electronics 1 950 000 2002-2004 

Microwaves Research Zirath Herbert SSF High speed electronics and photonics HSEP 7 300 000 2003-2007 

at Chalmers Zirath Herbert SSF Wide-bandgap Microwave Devices 12 000 000 2003-2007 

Grahn Jan SSF Subproject SFC HSEP 6 400 000 2003-2007 

Grahn Jan VINNOVA Chalmers competence center for high speed technology 75 000 000 1995-2005 

Zirath Herbert VINNOVA High frequency and high Powert SiC MESFET 3 600 000 2005-2006 

Swahn Thomas VINNOVA OptCom 9 050 000 2005-2006 

Zirath Herbert VINNOVA HI-MISSION 1 400 000 2005-2007 

Zirath Herbert VINNOVA 60 GHz MMIC 269 000 2007 

Grahn Jan VR 200 GHz mixers based on ultra-high speed 2 030 000 2003-2005 

InP HEMT technology

Appendix 

43 


Terahertz Systems Research Stake Jan SSF Subproject SFC HSEP 2 000 000 2003-2007 

at Chalmers Gevorgian Spartak SSF Subproject SFC HSEP 5 700 000 2003-2007 

Gevorgian Spartak VR Components for future micro/millimetre wave 2 730 000 2002-2004 

systems 

Gevorgian Spartak VR Tuneable Integrated Microwave Metamaterials (TIME) 1 790 000 2002-2008 

Nanotubes Research at Campbell Eleanor SSF CMOS Integrated Carbon-based Nano Components 10 000 000 2003-2007 

Chalmers Campbell Eleanor SSF CARAMEL 18 000 000 2000-2007 

Svensson Krister VR Electron Transport and Electromigration in 2 150 000 2004-2006 

Carbon Nanotubes (ETEC) 

Svensson Krister VR Electron transport and influence of mechanical 2 150 000 2007-2009 

stress in nanoscale structures (ETIM) 

Quantum Electronics Delsing Per SSF Nanodevices and quantum computing NANODEV 30 000 000 2003-2007 

Research at Chalmers Claeson Tord SSF Transport in low dimensional systems: carbon nanotubes, 1 500 000 2004-2007 

spintronics 

Kubatkin Sergey SSF Molecular electronics, fullerens, and carbon 2003-2007 

nanotubes, *Part of Nanodev reported independently 

Delsing Per VR Ultrafast charge sensors-2 4 600 000 2006-2008 

Kuzmin Leonid VR On-Chip Cascade Quasiparticle Amplifier for 2 030 000 2003-2005 

Bolometer Readout 

Kuzmin Leonid VR Cryogen-free He3 cryostat 760 000 2005 

Kuzmin Leonid VR Carbon Nanotube based Electron Cooling and 1 500 000 2006-2007 

Supersensitive Detection 

Lombardi Filomena VR Material and technological aspects of HTS parity 2 850 000 2002-2005 

switches for superconducting phase qubits 

Wendin Göran VR Quantum Computing with Josephson Junctions 1 600 000 2002-2004 

Nanostructure Physics Haviland David SSF Magneto-Electronic Nanodevices 8 600 000 2003-2007 

Research at KTH Haviland David SSF Nano Devices and Coponants 2 500 000 2003-2007 

(Delsing Per) 

(NanoDev, with Chalmers) 

Haviland David SSF Bio-Electronic Interfaces (BioX program) 2 750 000 2005-2007 

(Ulfendahl Mats) 

Haviland David VR Quantum Phase Transition and Quantum 2 025 000 2003-2006 

Electrodynamics 

Haviland David VR Nano Patterned Protein binding on electronic 2 400 000 2001-2003 

substrates 

Korenivski Vlad VR Spin resonant tunneling nano-devices 2 350 000 2007-2009 

Spintronics Research Rao K.Venkat VINNOVA Ferromagnetic Semiconductors for 2 000 000 2005-2007 

at KTH 

Spintronics -Phase II 

Rao K Venkat VINNOVA Ferromagnetic Semiconductors for Spintronics and 1 000 000 2004-2006 

Magnetooptic devices 

Nanometer Structures Samuelson Lars SSF Microelectronics Center: Nano science for 40 000 000 2003-2007 

Research at Lund University 

future Electronic Devices. 

Samuelson Lars SSF Materials Consortium: Quantum Materials 25 000 000 2000-2005 

Wernersson Lars-Erik SSF INGVAR Grant 6 000 000 2005-2008 

Samuelson Lars SSF Graduate School: Nano Science 5 000 000 2003-2005 

Samuelson Lars SSF Strategic Research Center: Nanowires for Emerging 34 000 000 2006-2010 

Nanoelectronics and Life Science Applications. 

Montelius Lars VINNOVA VINST Next NIL 3 737 000 2002-2004 

Wallenberg Reine VR Nanostructured Functional Materials 675 000 2004 

Tegenfeldt Jonas VR DNA in Nanoscale Confined Environments 2 286 000 2008-2010 

Deppert Knut VR Experimental and Numerical Investigation of 1 040 000 2002-2003 

Aerosol Nucleation in Non-Isothermal Flow 

Deppert Knut VR Dedicated Cluster Tool for Nanowire Growth 8 060 000 2005-2010 

Wernersson Lars-Erik VR Heterogeneous Integration of Narrow Band Gap Materials 2 200 000 2007-2009



Wallenberg Reine VR Nanostructured Functional Materials 1 490 360 2005-2007 

Höök Fredrik VR Multiparameter QCM-D Measurements on 1 080 000 2004-2005 

Array-Based Formats for Applications in Biotechnology 

Höök Fredrik VR Miniaturzed Parellel Sensors for Studies of Membrane 3 171 000 2006-2008 

Proteins 

Höök Fredrik VR Novel Sensor Concepts Based on Electromechanical 2 566 200 2006-2008 

and Optical Readouts for Applications in Biotechnology 

Samuelson Lars VR Nanowires for Fundamental Materials science and 22 000 000 2005-2010 

Quantum Physics and for Applications in Electronics, 

Photonics and in Life-sciences 

Wallenberg Reine VR Fabrication, Characterization and Applications of 1 755 000 2002-2004 

Nanowhiskers 

Xu Hongqi VR Theoretical Study of Molecular and Electronic Structure 1 060 800 2002-2004 

of Semiconductor Nanocrystals 

Pistol Mats-Erik VR Theory and Experiments of Quantum Optics Based on 1 880 643 2005-2007 

Quantum Dots 

Pistol Mats-Erik VR Theory and Experiment of Novel Quantum Wire Structures 1 950 000 2008-2010 

Samuelson Lars VR Optical and electrical studies of single quantum 3 900 000 2002-2003 

structures and single molecules 

Pistol Mats-Erik VR Quantum optics based on quantum dots 1 365 000 2002-2004 

Hongqi Xu VR Three-terminal ballistic junctions as building blocks 2 028 000 2003-2005 

for nanoscale electronic devices: design, fabrication, 

characterization and modeling 

Hongqi Xu VR Three-terminal ballistic junctions as building blocks for 2 850 000 2006-2008 

nanoscale electronic devices: design, fabrication, 

characterization and modeling 

Wacker Andreas VR Scattering and Coherence in Quantum Cascade Lasers 700 000 2005-2007 

Wacker Andreas VR Employment as Scientist 953 100 2003-2008 

Samuelson Lars VR Linné Grant: Nanoscience and Quantum Engineering. 75 000 000 2006-2016 

Samuelson Lars VR Studies of Hetero- and Quantumstructures in Nanowires 2 850 000 2006-2008 

Underlying Applications in Electronics, Photonics and in 

Thermoelectrics 

VR Photonics and Electronics in One-Dimensional Nanowires 1 976 000 2003 

VR Photonics and Electronics in One-Dimensional Nanowires 861 667 2005 

Pistol Mats-Erik VR Modelling and Optical Studies of Quantum Structures 811 200 2003-2004 

Tegenfeldt Jonas VR Microfabricated Nearfield Optical Scanner for DNA, 4 050 384 2003-2006 

Protein and Cell Studies 

Samuelson Lars VR Studies of Hetero- and Quantum in 0D and 1D 2 028 000 2003-2005 

Deppert Knut VR Novel Nanomaterials by Metallurgy in the Aerosol Phase 1 822 500 2004-2006 

Wernersson Lars-Erik VR Metalorganic Vapour Phase Epitaxy System for III-V Materials 7 700 000 2004-2008 

Wallenberg Reine VR Employment as Scientist in the Subject “Inorganic Synthesis 3 365 120 2002-2003 

and Characterization of Cluster” during 

2001-01-01—2003-12-31 

Organic Electronics Inganäs Olle SSF Organic electroncs 31 000 000 2003-2007 

Research at Linköping Inganäs Olle VINNOVA Molekylära elektroniska maskiner 4 500 000 2003-2006 

University Inganäs Olle VR Metal-semiconductor transition in oriented conjugated 2 730 000 2002-2004 

polymer films in field effect devices 

Inganäs Olle VR Biomolekyldetektion med konjugerade polyelektrolyter 2 100 000 2006-2008 

Paper Electronics Berggren Magnus SSF INGVAR Programme 10 000 000 2001-2007 

Research at Linköping Berggren Magnus SSF Strategic Research Centre of Organic Bioelectronics 37 000 000 2006-2010 

University Richter Dahlfors Agneta SSF Bio-X: Organisk Elektronik för reglering av cellers signalvägar 5 500 000 2005-2008 

and Magnus Berggren 

Berggren Magnus VR Ion and Fluid Logics: Novel Organic Electrochemical 2 030 000 2003-2005 

Transistors 

Berggren Magnus VR Organic diodes and transistors including molecular switches 1 790 000 2006-2008

Appendix 

45 


Photonic Communication Andrekson Peter SSF Subproject SFC HSEP 4 000 000 2003-2007 

Research at Chalmers Andrekson Peter SSF Subproject SFC HSEP 7 000 000 2003-2007 

Andrekson Peter VINNOVA 100 GET prestudy 500 000 2007 

Andrekson Peter VR Ultra-Broadband Fiber-Optic Parametric Amplifiers and 2 800 000 2007-2009 

Their Applications 

Andrekson Peter VR Experiments in coding and equalization for high-speed 2 000 000 2004 

optical communication systems 

Karlsson Magnus VR Ultrahigh speed optical transmission impairments and 2 730 000 2002-2004 

their remedy 

Karlsson Magnus VR New functionailities in optical networks 2 250 000 2006-2008 

Andrekson Peter VR Coding and equalization for optical communication systems 2 100 000 2004-2007 

Andrekson Peter VR Coding and equalization for optical communication systems 2 800 000 2007-2009 

Photonic Components Willander Magnus SSF Wide-Bandgap Nanolasers 10 000 000 2003-2007 

Research at Linköping Willander Magnus VR Technical and medical applications of ZnO 3 000 000 2007-2009 

University 

Quantum Optics Research Karlsson Anders SSF INGVAR grant, A. Karlsson 10 000 000 2001-2007 

at KTH Björk Gunnar SSF Subproject SFC Photonics 8 000 000 2003-2007 

Björk Gunnar VR Fundamentals and applications of quantum interference 2 800 000 2003-2005 

Björk Gunnar VR Quantum information: Multipartite entanglement 2 800 000 2006-2008 

Karlsson Anders VR Photonic Quantum Information Technologies 1 500 000 2005-2007 

Photonic Devices Research Larsson Anders SSF Dilute nitrides for photonics 12 000 000 2003-2007 

at Chalmers Larsson Anders SSF Semiconductor lasers for optical networks and 10 000 000 2003-2007 

interconnects (part of HSEP) 

Galt Sheila SSF Microoptics and diffractive optics for communication and 5 500 000 2003-2007 

signal processing (part of HSEP) 

Rudquist Per SSF Analog electrooptic effects in ferroelectric and antiferro- 2 700 000 2003-2007 

electric liquid crystals, part of HSEP (NSF/SSF) 

Larsson Anders VINNOVA High speed optoelectronics for optical interconnects (CHACH) 2 600 000 2003-2005 

Larsson Anders VINNOVA Low cost solutions for broadband access 3 200 000 2003-2006 

Wang Shumin VR Metamorphic Long Wavelength Lasers on GaAs 2 025 000 2004-2006 

Wang Shumin VR Metamorphic long wavelength lasers on patterned GaAs and Si 2 230 000 2007-2009 

Rudquist Per VR Electrooptic applications of orthoconic antiferroelectric liquid 1 460 000 2001-2003 

crystals and analog response in ferroelectric liquid crystals 

Rudquist Per VR Polar effects and fundamental physics of chiral liquid crystals 650 000 2002-2003 

Larsson Anders VR Vertical external cavity surface emitting lasers 2 028 000 2003-2005 

Larsson Anders VR Optically pumped semiconductor disk lasers 2 300 000 2007-2009 

Photonic and Microwave Qiu Min SSF Photonic crystals: Light Magic at Work 6 000 000 2005-2008 

Engineering Research Thylén Lars SSF Subproject Photonics 52 000 000 2003-2007 

at KTH Thylén Lars VINNOVA High speed photonics 5 000 000 2002 

Thylén Lars VINNOVA Fast optical transmitters 9 050 000 2005-2006 

Larsson Anders VINNOVA Low-cost components for broadband access networks 3 317 000 2004-2006 

Ghisoni Marco, Zarlink VINNOVA Optical Duplexer Innovative packaging for access Networks 1 166 000 2006-2007 

Semiconductor AB 

Hammar, Mattias VR Advanced technologies for surface-emitting optoelectronics 1 690 000 2004-2006 

Jaskorzynska Bozena VR Optical devices in silicon-based photonic crystals 2 030 000 2003-2005 

Pasiskevicius Valdas VR Control of optical signals with non-linear ferro-electric 1 660 000 2003-2005 

structures 

Qiu Min VR Large scale computational analysis and design of photonic 2 020 000 2004-2006 

integrated circuits 

Qiu Min VR Photonic crystals with dispersive media 2 150 000 2007-2008 

Srinivasan Anand VR Negative refraction in two-dimensional photonic crystals 2 150 000 2007-2009 

Qiu Min VR Design, nanofabrication, and characterization of optical 3 037 500 2007-2009 

metamaterials



Photonic Materials Thylen Lars VR Intersubband modulator structures 620 000 2003-2004 

Research at Chalmers Andersson Thorvald VR GaN-research on intersubband structures 500 000 2003-2005 

Thylen Lars VR GaN-modulators 900 000 2005-2007 

Andersson Thorvald VR Molecular Layers on Semiconductors Grown by organic 1 950 000 2002-2004 

molecular beam epitaxy 

Andersson Thorvald VR Basic growth issues of MBE-grown GaN materials for devices 1 950 000 2002-2004 

System Design Research Ismail Mohammed SSF Radio and Mixed signal 25 000 000 2003-2007 

at KTH Ismail Mohammed VR A Broadband CMOS “Sniffer” for Always-Best Connected 4G 2 250 000 2006-2008 

Wireless Access 

Dubrova Elena VR Efficient Algorithms for Probabilistic Verification 2 030 000 2003-2005 

Tenhunen Hannu VR Next generation of passive radioferequency identification 2 100 000 2005-2007 

enabling by ultrawide band radio 

System Design Research Karlsson Johan M SSF Personal Computing and Communication 14 200 000 1997-2005 

at Lund University Anderson John B SSF High Speed Wireless Center 5 000 000 2006-2010 

Sundström Lars VINNOVA Integrated Technologies for Wireless Telecommunications 5 400 000 1998-2004 

Sjöland Henrik VINNOVA Hi-Mission 800 000 2006-2008 

Yuan Jiren VINNOVA Competence Center for Circuit Design 56 000 000 1998-2007 

Sjöland Henrik VINNOVA Technology for cheap 60GHz WLAN and cont’d 5 000 000 2003-2008 

Nilsson Peter VR Hardware Architectures for MIMO Systems 2 250 000 2006-2008 

Öwall Viktor VR Design Techniques for Ultra Low Energy Digital Circuits- 1 200 000 2007-2009 

Sub-threshold Operation and Leakage Reduction 

System Design Research Stenström Per SSF Flexible System-on-chip 8 000 000 2003-2007 

at Chalmers Hughes John VR Typing Erlang 1 800 000 2005-2007 

Jeppson Kjell VR Noise Coupling Analysis and Transistor Modeling for 2 020 000 2004-2006 

High-Frequency Nanoscale SoCs 

Larsson-Edefors Per VR Tuned Power Gating under Application Control 2 230 000 2007-2009 

Hughes John VR Session types meet industrial software 1 800 000 2006-2009 

System Design Research Svensson Christer SSF Integrated electronic systems 50 000 000 2003-2007 

at Linköping University Wahab Qamar-ul VINNOVA Optimization of LDMOS transistor for RF applications 1 300 000 2005-2006 

Liu Dake VINNOVA Socware project 2 250 000 2003-2005 

Liu Dake VINNOVA Socware project 3 000 000 2003-2005 

Peng Zebo VINNOVA SoC design for testability 3 500 000 2002-2004 

Johansson Håkan VR Effektiva och flexibla algoritmer för digital signalbehandling 1 944 000 2006-2008 

Löwenborg Per VR Flexibla analoga/digitala gränssnitt med höga prestanda 1 863 000 2005-2007 

Svensson Christer VR Direct RF sampling for future radio architectures 2 250 000 2006-2008 

Alvandpour Atila VR Process-Variation-Tolerant, Ultra Low Power, High-Speed 2 250 000 2006-2008 

Analog-to-Digital Conversion 

Wanhammar Lars VR Energieffektiva signaler och systems 1 863 000 2005-2007 

Gustafsson Oscar VR Samdesign av algoritm och hårdvara för applikationer 2 025 000 2007-2009 

begränsade av minne och kommunikation 

Gustafsson Oscar VR Energieffektiv aritmetik 3 240 000 2004-2007

Appendix 

47 

Appendix 6. Background of experts 

Personal information 

Name: 

Affiliation: 

Robert W. Brodersen 

University of California, Berkeley 

Professor Emeritus 

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer 

Science University of California, Berkeley 

Telephone: +1 510 666 31 10 

E-mail: 

bwb@bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu 

Year of birth: 1945 

Native country: USA 

Academic Degrees: 

1966 Bachelor’s of Science degrees in Electrical 

Engineering and Mathematics from the California State 

Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA 

1968 Engineering and Master’s of Science degrees from 

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 

Cambridge 

1972 Ph.D. in Engineering from MIT 

Employment history 

1976–1976 Member of the Technical Staff, Central Research 

Laboratory, Texas Instruments, Dallas. 

1976– EECS faculty at the University of California 

Special Assignments 

Professor Brodersen is the author or co-author of numerous journal and conference 

papers and author, co-author, editor or contributor to 16 books including: Anatomy 

of a Silicon Compiler, 1992, Low Power Digital CMOS Design, 1995, Low-Power 

CMOS Wireless Communications: A Wideband CDMA System Design, 1998 and 

Energy Efficient Micro Processor Design, 2001. He was a co-founder of Atheros, 

Inc., and is now chairman of SiBEAM, BeeCUBE and Adaptrum. He is a Fellow of 

the IEEE and member of the National Academy of Engineering. 

Scientific Activities and Interests 

Professor Brodersen’s research focus is on new applications of integrated 

circuits as applied to personal communications systems with emphasis on wireless 

communications, low power design and the CAD tools necessary to support these 

activities.



Name: 

Affiliation: 

Qiuting Huang 

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich 

Telephone: +41 446 32 52 40 

E-mail: 

huang@iis.ee.ethz.ch 


Native country: USA 


B.Sc in 1982 from Harbin Institute of Technology 

Ph.D in 1987 from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 

Belgium. 


In 2007 Professor Huang was awarded a Cheung Kong Scholar Professorship by the 

Chinese Ministry of Education and the Cheung Kong Foundation, and spends part 

of his time at the South East University in Nanjing, China. He is a Fellow of the IEEE 

and serves on the executive committee of the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits 

Conference (ISSCC). He is also a member of wireless subcommittee of ISSCC 

and the chairman of its European Steering Committee. Furthermore, Professor 

Huang has been serving on the technical program committee of the European Solid- 

State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC) in the past 15 years. 


Prof. Huang is an acknowledged expert in mixed signal analogue-digital integrated 

circuits, and radio frequency (RF) circuits and systems for communications. He was 

one of the pioneers in the use of CMOS technology for RF applications and played a 

key role in the wireless industry’s acceptance of RF CMOS for cellular applications. 

His research group published the world’s first RF CMOS transceiver for GSM, as 

well as WCDMA. He also led the development of an RF CMOS transceiver for the 

IEEE 802.11g wireless LAN standard. His research group also developed the 

world’s lowest power paging receiver for the ERMES standard, and GPS receiver. 

Outside RFICs, Prof. Huang published extensively on A-D and D-A converters, integrated 

circuits for sensor interface and Microsystems, integrated circuits for passive 

telemetry and other biomedical applications, smart power integrated circuits, 

very high speed digital integrated circuits as well as application specific integrated 

circuits for digital baseband modem, including an HSDPA receiver and a turbo decoder 

for HSDPA. 

Professor Huang has collaborated with industry extensively, and his group spun out 

three startup companies. He is the founder of Advanced Circuit Pursuit AG, which 

develops highly integrated RF CMOS transceivers for cellular applications.

Appendix 

49 


Name: 

Affiliation: 

Mikko Paalanen 

Helsinki University of Technology 

Telephone: +358 50 352 88 99 

E-mail: 

paalanen@neuro.hut.fi 


Native country: Finland 

Academic Degrees: MSc, Helsinki University of Technology 1972 

MSc, University of Illinois, Champaign Urbana, USA 1973 

PhD, Helsinki University of Technology, 1977 


1977–1992 Member of technical staff, AT&T Bell 

1992–1995 Professor in Applied Physics, Univ. of Jyväskylä, Finland 

1996–present 

Director, Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University 

of Technology, Finland 


Chairman of LT22, Int. Conf. on Low Temperature Physics 1999, 1380 participants 

Chairman of IUPAP C5, Commission on Low Temperature Physics, 2006–2008 

Chairman of ERC PE3, Panel on Condensed Matter Physics, Starting grant 2008 

Member of London Prize Selection Panel, 2005–2008 

Member of Simon Prize (Institute of Physics, UK) Selection Panel, 2008–2011 

Editor of Journal of Low Temperature Physics, 2005– 


In his thesis work Prof. Paalanen studied superfluid 3He with NMR method. At Bell 

Laboratories he shifted his interest in semiconductor physics, especially in electron 

transport in low dimensional structures. He studied electron localization in 3D 

doped silicon, 2D GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures and more recently also in 1D carbon 

nanotubes. Other topics of his interest at Bell Laboratories were Quantum Hall 

effect, Fractional Quantum Hall effect and superconductor-insulator transition in 2D 

InO films. After moving to Finland in 1992 he has dedicated his time to studies of 

single electron transistor and its various applications. Very recently superconducting 

single electron transistor has turned out to be a promising platform for quantum 

computing.



Name: 

Affiliation: 

Klaus Petermann 

Technische Universität Berlin 

Telephone: +49 30 314 233 46 

E-mail: 

petermann@tu-berlin.de 


Native country: Germany 


1974 Dipl. Ing 

1976 Dr. Ing. 


1974–1976 Research associate at Technische Universität 

Braunschweig 

1977–1983 Scientific staff member Forschungsinstitut AEG 

Telefunken Ulm 

Since 1983 

full Professor Technische Universität Berlin 


1989–1989 Dean of the faculty „Electrical Engineering“ at the TU 

Berlin 

1997–2002 Head of the Commision for Research and scientific 

training at the TU Berlin 

2004–2006 Vice-president for research at the TU Berlin 


1990–2006 Reviewer and project supervisor at the BMBF within 

photonics and new communication networks (KOMNET, 

Multi-Tera-Net) 

1997–2002 Affiliate for the DFG at the Technische Universität Berlin 

1996–1996 President of the German „Fakultätentag“ for Electrical 

Engineering 

since 1994 

Elected member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of 

sciences 


Elected member of acatech (German academy of 

technical sciences) 

1999–2004 Associate Editor, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters 

1996–2004 Member of the board of the VDE 


Member of the senate of the DFG

Appendix 

51 


Name: 

Affiliation: 

Krishna C. Saraswat 

Stanford University, Department of Electrical Engineering 

Telephone: +1 650 725 36 10 

E-mail: 

saraswat@stanford.edu 


Native country: Born in India, Citizen of USA 


1971–74 Ph.D. Electrical Engineering, Stanford University 

1968–69 M.S. Electrical Engineering, Stanford University 

1963–68 B.E. Electronics, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, India 


2004– Rickey/Nielsen Chair Professor of Engineering, Stanford University 

1983– Professor of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University 

1974–83 Member of Research Staff, Integrated Circuits Laboratory, 

Stanford University 

1969–70 Product Engineer, Texas Instruments, Dallas Texas 


Consultant and on the board of many companies. 

Cofounder of Sensys Instruments (later acquired by Thermawave) 

Cofounder of Solexel, Inc. 

Assoc. Director, Sematech/SRC Center for Environmentally Benign Manufacturing of 

Semiconductors, since 1999. 

Member, IEEE Grove Award evaluation committee, 2008. 

Member, IEEE Fellow evaluation committee, 94–2003. 

Member, Technical Committee, IEEE Int. Interconnect Tech. Conf. 97–2003, 

Chair 2002. 

Member, Technical Committee, IEEE Int. Reliability Physics Symp. 97–98 

Member, Technical Committee, IEEE Int. Symp. on VLSI Tech.1984-89, 92–97. 

Member, Technical Committee, Int Workshop on Statistical Metrology. 95–97. 

Member, Technical Committee, ESSDERC’92 

Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Electron Device , 1988–90 

Chairman, Workshop on CVD Tungsten, 1989, Member Technical Committee, 1985–86 

Member, Technical Committee, IEEE Int. Device Research Conf. 1985–88 

United Nations UNIDO expert on microelectronics in India, summer of 1985 

Chairman, IEEE IEDM Device Technology group 1984, Member Technical Committee, 1982–83 


Professor Saraswat’s research interests are in new and innovative materials, structures, and 

process technology of silicon, germanium and III-V devices and interconnects for nanoelectronics. 

He has graduated more than 60 doctoral students and has authored or co-authored 

over 550 technical papers.



Name: 

Affiliation: 

Clivia M. Sotomayor Torres 

Catalan Institue of Nanotechnology and Catalan Institute 

of Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) 

Telephone: +34 93 581 44 08 

E-mail: 

clivia.sotomayor.icn@uab.es 


Native country: Born in Chile, citizen of the United Kingdom. 


BSc. (Hons.) Physics in 1979 (Southampton University, UK) 

Dr. Phil. in Physics in 1984 (Manchester University, UK) 


1983–1984 Research assistant at the University of St. Andrews (UK). 

1984–87 Lecturer in Physics, St. Andrews University (UK) 

1986–1996 Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Electrical Engineering at the 

University Glasgow (UK). 

1996–2004 Chair of Materials Sciences in Electronics at the University of 

Wuppertal, Germany. 

2004–2008 Research Professor, University College Cork, now Tyndall 

National Institute. 

2007–date 

Research Professor of the Catalan Institute of Research and 

Advanced Studies (ICREA) 


Clivia has received three prestigious awards from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the 

Nuffield Foundation, and an Amelia Earhart Fellowship from ZONTA International (USA) 

in 1993, 1990 and 1982, respectively. Since May 2007 she holds a Research Professorship 

awarded by the Catalan Institute of Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) 

and is using it at the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology ICN (www.nanocat.org). She 

is the author of over 350 scientific publications and has edited six books, the latest 

one entitled “Alternative Lithography: unleashing the power of Nanotechnology” (Kluwer/Academic 

and Plenum/Publishers, New York, 2003). She has participated and 

participates in several EU projects, among them NaPa, PhOREMOST of FP6. Among the 

international assignments she is member of the Panel of Expert advising the French 

Agency of Research on the six national nanoscience and nanotechnology facilities in 

France. She has acted as member of the programme committee of CLEO, MNE, Si-Nanoelectronics 

Workshop, Electronic Materials conference, and several other international 

cnferences. 


In Spain Clivia is setting up the group Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures to investigate 

phonons in low dimensional systems, develop nanofabrication methods for 3D 

structuring and carry out research in dispersion engineering.

Appendix 

53 


Name: 

Affiliation: 

Franz-Josef Tegude 

University of Duisburg-Essen, Faculty of Engineering 

Sciences, Center for Semiconductors and Optoelectronics 

Telephone: +49 203 379 33 91 

E-mail: 

franz.tegude@uni-due.de 


Native country: Germany 


Prof. Dr. rer. nat. 


Franz-Josef Tegude received the diploma degree in physics from the Westfälische 

Wilhelms Universität, Münster, in 1977, and doctoral degree in Electronic Engineering 

from University of Duisburg in 1983. In 1983 he joined the Alcatel-SEL research 

center, Stuttgart, where he headed the OEIC group and, later on, the department for 

characterization of optoelectronic materials and devices. Since 1990 he is full professor 

for Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Duisburg University, and head of the 

Solid State Electronics Department. 


Dean Electrical and Electronics Engineering (1996–1998) 

IEEE-EDS Chapter Chair (1998–2005) 

Member of the German Research Foundation Review Board (since 2008) 

Member of InP and Related Materials Steering Committee 

Member of German Physical Society (DPG), the German Society of Information 

Technology (VDE, ITG) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 


Electronic, optoelectronic and nanoelectronic materials, devices and circuits based 

on III-V semiconductors.


Appendix 7. Abbreviations and acronyms 

ACREO 

A/D 

AFM 

CMOS 

D/A 

DATE 

DSP 

DVB-H 

100GBE 

HEMT 

LAN 

LDMOS 

LED 

LNA 

MBE 

MC2 

MEMS 

MIMO 

MMIC 

MOCVD 

MOS 

MyFab 

NEMS 

OFDM 

RF 

RFIC 

SOC 

SOI 

TCAD 

TEM 

VCO 

VCSEL 

VLSI 

Research Institute in Information Technology 

Analog Digital Converter 

Atomic Force Microscope 

Complementary MOS 

Digital Analog Converter 

Conference in Design, Automation and Test in Europe 

Digital Signal Processor 

Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld 

100-Gigabit Ethernet 

High Electron Mobility Transistor 

Local Area Network 

Lateral Double-Diffused MOS 

Light Emitting Diode 

Low Noise Amplifier 

Molecular Beam Epitaxy 

Department for Micro Technology and Nano Science, Chalmers 

Microelectromechanical Systems 

The use of multiple antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver 

Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit 

Metal-Organic Chemical Vapour Deposition 

Metal Oxide Semiconductor 

The Swedish Micro and Nano Fabrication Network 

Nanoelectromechanical Devices 

Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing 

Radio Frequency 

Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit 

System-on-Chip 

Silicon-on-Insulator 

Technology Computer Aided Design 

Transmission Electron Microscope 

Voltage-Controlled Oscillator 

Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser 

Very Large Scale Integration

55 

T H E S W E D I S H F O U N D AT I O N F O R S T R AT E G I C R E S E A R C H 

n supports research and graduate training in the natural sciences, 

engineering and medicine for the purpose of strenghtening Sweden’s 

future competitiveness 

n finances a large number of research projects at Swedish universities 

- many of them in collaboration with industry 

n awards individual grants to particularly prominent researchers 

n supports important areas such as biotechnology, materials development, 

microelectronics, information technology and product realisation 

n has a total annual payment volume of SEK 600 million 

n has a capital of about SEK 10 billion (January 2008) as the basis 

for its operations 

P.O. Box 70483, SE-107 26 Stockholm, Sweden Visiting address: Kungsbron 1, G7 

Phone: +46 8 505 816 00 Fax: +46 8 505 816 10 E-mail: found@stratresearch.se www.stratresearch.se

Swedish Research in Microelectronics

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