AmberWave’s first development was strained silicon, which increases the speed and reduces power consumption in a silicon chip. Strained silicon “stretches” the crystal lattice of silicon, reducing resistance and increasing the mobility of charge carriers (electrons and holes) in semiconductor devices.

AmberWave and its research collaborators have demonstrated improved NMOS drive current because of the increased electron mobility, as well as improvement in PMOS drive current due to increased hole mobility from strained silicon. The result has been that CMOS circuits fabricated with strained silicon technology have increased processing speed and/or reduced power consumption.

The performance enhancements from strained silicon offer manufacturers the opportunity to build more powerful microprocessors, faster gaming devices and longer-lasting mobile devices.

A recent Frost & Sullivan report discusses the promising future of strained silicon for ultra high-speed computing devices. You can read about details here.

For more details on Strained Silicon click here.