The European power electronics industry is leading the transition from silicon to wide bandgap compound semiconductors. These materials offer huge benefits in terms of performance, but the manufacturing yield and long-term reliability are affected by material defects, which are hard to identify and characterise at the fabrication facility with existing techniques. The ‘PowerElec’ project is a European Metrology Project developing new metrological methods for quality assurance and to support standards development that will support supply chain growth. The project has developed new high-throughput optical metrology techniques for rapid wafer-scale measurements, as well as novel forms of off-line nanoscale defect characterisation. Compressive sensing is a key component of this project, which provides a means of overcoming the traditional trade-off between measurement throughput and sensitivity.
Dr Sebastian Wood (CPhys) is a Principal Scientist at the National Physical Laboratory (UK) working in the field of metrology for emerging semiconductor materials. He is a UK Expert on international standards committees and has led multiple projects supporting companies to develop new technologies and products through the provision of advanced nanometrology of novel semiconductor materials and devices. He is currently the coordinator of a €1.7M European project developing novel metrology for the manufacture of compound semiconductor materials for power electronics (EMPIR ‘PowerElec’), where he is leading a consortium of 13 partner organisations from industry, academia, and metrology communities. This project is developing new metrological instruments and methods for high-throughput and high-sensitivity characterisation of wide bandgap materials.