UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Center for Heterogeneous Integration of Micro Electronic Systems (CHIMES) held its fourth annual review Aug. 25-26 at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
CHIMES, led by Penn State, was established in 2023 through the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC)’s Joint University Microelectronics Program 2.0 (JUMP 2.0), a consortium of industrial partners in cooperation with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The center’s research focuses on advancing semiconductor packaging technologies, components that power devices with applications ranging from AI data centers to communications and radar defense systems.
Over the center’s first four years, it has supported 187 students and postdoctoral researchers working under the supervision of 27 principal investigators across 19 universities, with 85 of these students being employed by the semiconductor industry.
The event welcomed more than 136 attendees, bringing together the CHIMES team, industry liaisons and representatives from SRC and DARPA to review the center’s research goals and progress while addressing future priorities. Students showcased their research through minute-long lightning talks, poster presentations and demos featuring software and hardware innovations while faculty delivered technical presentations.
A major highlight at this year’s review was the presentation of 18 breakthrough technologies developed over the center’s first four years.
“These innovations have the potential to transform the semiconductor industry by pushing the boundaries of what is possible in terms of chip size, speed, memory access and efficiency,” said Madhavan Swaminathan, CHIMES director and head of Penn State College of Engineering’s Department of Electrical Engineering.
Examples of the center’s breakthroughs include a two-phase and single-phase cooling system, high-efficiency power converters with integrated vertical power delivery, a radio frequency (RF) glass platform for 6G communications, diamond/aluminum nitride-based thermal management platform and integrated photonics in glass substrates.
Swaminathan said he firmly believes that several of the technologies developed by CHIMES will have a lasting impact on the advancement of semiconductor technologies.