Invention Will Cut Cost of Chips, Says Motorola

Motorola Inc., the largest maker of communications chips, said Monday that it invented a method of fusing two widely used semiconductor materials that may reduce the cost of making mobile phones and other gear.

The company said it found a way to attach gallium arsenide, the main compound used in some chips critical to cellular phones and optical-networking equipment, to silicon, which costs one-tenth as much. Semiconductor makers will be able to reduce the use of gallium arsenide to an ultra-thin layer above the silicon instead of making the entire chip from it, Motorola scientists said.

That would provide the benefits of gallium arsenide without the high cost, Motorola said. The process won’t immediately jump-start Motorola’s struggling semiconductor business, because the chips won’t be in production until late 2003, Chief Technology Officer Dennis Roberson said. However, Motorola expects to license patents for its unnamed technology to many companies.

“I’d hesitate to use the words ‘Holy Grail,’ but it’s pretty close,” said Richard Cunningham, an optical-networking analyst at researcher Cahners In-Stat Group. “I’d ride it hard if I were in their shoes with that kind of patent protection.”

Previously, chips had to be made entirely from either silicon or gallium arsenide, Roberson said.

Motorola, which also is the No. 2 mobile-phone maker behind Nokia, will use the material in its own chips. The Schaumburg, Ill.-based company said it has applied for more than 270 patents related to the discovery.

Motorola said it is one of the biggest advances ever in the history of the chip industry.

“I see this technology as becoming absolutely fundamental to all of the semiconductor industry, where you will only rarely find semiconductors that don’t deploy some element of this advancement,” Roberson said. The technology “will literally change everything and find its way into all of the devices out there,” he said.