Semiconductors, or microchips, are vital to life in the modern world. They’re used in the microwave you heated your breakfast in this morning, the car you drove to work, the mobile phone you shouldn’t use while driving, the bank ATM you visited, and the screened device you’re reading this story on.

They’re in our TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines, helping us live comfortable lives. They also help us stay alive as part of the medical network, used in pacemakers, blood pressure monitors, and MRI machines, among other things. Also, our national economic and defense systems rely on them. Basically, semiconductors control and manage the flow of information in the machinery that keeps the world going.

And right now, at Georgia Tech, researchers are working to innovate chip technology to ensure that U.S. semiconductor development is globally competitive, reliable, sustainable, and resilient, today and in the future.

“If you look at semiconductors, or the whole area of computing, it spans across Georgia Tech — across many different schools and disciplines,” said Arijit Raychudhury, professor and Steve W. Chaddick Chair in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). “Starting with physics and chemistry, where we essentially learn how different types of materials will react, to materials science and engineering, to electrical engineering and computer engineering, to computer science.”

It's a diverse, multidisciplinary enterprise from bottom to top, Raychudhury noted. And there is still plenty of room at the bottom, as theoretical physicist Richard P. Feynman famously said more than 60 years ago, predicting that one day we’d be making things at the atomic level. We are. It’s a familiar realm to Victor Fung and his lab, where they are designing new materials for semiconductors from the ground up, atom by atom.

“We are interested in exploring how to translate the latest advances in AI and machine learning to aid in accelerating computational materials simulations and materials discovery,” said Fung, assistant professor in the School of Computational Science. “We’ve been developing methods which can accurately predict a wide range of materials’ properties, to greatly facilitate high-throughput materials screening.”

Fung’s lab is using AI to discover previously unstudied materials with the electronic properties to build into chips. This approach to creating “designer” semiconductors would be significantly faster and cover more of the materials space than current methods.

Improving the Landscape

Smaller, more efficient, and more powerful are all part of the constantly evolving landscape in semiconductor research and development. It’s a very expensive landscape. While many chips are about the size of a fingernail, they are among the most complex human-made objects on Earth. Just building a semiconductor fabrication factory costs billions of dollars.

For a chemical engineer like Michael Filler, that sounds like opportunity.

“Chemical engineers think about how we produce products on a massive scale,” said Filler, associate professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and associate director of the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN).

Filler, whose research involves the growing of semiconductor components, like transistors, from seed particles, is aiming to help democratize the process of chip development, bringing down the cost substantially while maintaining performance. In a not too distant future, that could mean an individual at home printing a chip on a machine similar to a 3D printer.

“Imagine a laser printer that can literally spit out custom electronics in a matter of minutes,” Filler said. “We’re big believers in the individual’s ability to be creative and know what they want to build for their applications. Ultimately, we’re interested in giving makers and prototypers opportunities to customize electronics.”

He’s in the right place for the far-reaching research he has in mind, adding, “We are so blessed with great facilities at Georgia Tech. It would be hard to imagine working somewhere else, because very few places have the diversity and quality of tooling we have here.”

IEN, which facilitates much of the semiconductor research at Georgia Tech, is based in the Marcus Nanotechnology Building, with its state-of-the-art micro/nano fabrication facilities such as the shared cleanroom space and a laser machine lab for micromachining.

But it is the range of expertise and creativity among faculty and students who are making IEN and Georgia Tech a thought leader in semiconductor research. This is evidenced by Tech’s recent grant of $65.7 million from the Semiconductor Research Corporation and the Defense Research Projects Agency to launch two new interdisciplinary research centers.

Events like Georgia Tech Chip Day (May 2) and Nanowire Week, an international gathering happening in Atlanta in October, also speak to Tech’s growing influence in this area.

Answering the Call

The Covid-19 pandemic clarified just how difficult it can be to make more chips. A shortage of semiconductors affected the supply of phones, computers, and other commonly used items during the global shutdown. Increased demand, depleted reserves, and too few manufacturing plants and workers significantly crippled the supply chain.

“The high degree of geographic concentration in certain parts of the semiconductor supply chain has recently created a heightened risk of supply interruptions,” said Chip White, Schneider National Chair in Transportation and Logistics and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE). “Such interruptions and resulting wild fluctuations in semiconductor demand can threaten the nation’s public health, defense, and economic security.”

With that in mind, translational supply chain research is going on in several places on campus, White said, including the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute and the NSF AI Research Institute for Advances in Optimization. White and his colleagues are developing software platforms for stress testing manufacturing supply chains. The goal is to identify vulnerabilities and risk mitigation procedures to design and operate next generation supply chains for critical industries such as the semiconductor industry, to improve global competitiveness and strike a balance between market forces and national security.

In an effort to address and feed the next generation demand for chips, the Biden administration recently launched a massive effort to outcompete China in semiconductor manufacturing, offering $39 billion in funding incentives for companies seeking to build plants in the U.S.

Another related area of importance in the ongoing development of semiconductors is growing the workforce of the future, and that includes a new wave of researchers. This is a role that Jennifer Hasler takes seriously.

“I have a strong interest and belief in mentoring,” said Hasler, ECE professor and founder of the Integrated Computational Electronics lab at Georgia Tech. She’s proven, theoretically at least, that the technology already exists to build a silicon-based version of the human cerebral cortex (which would cost billions of dollars to design and build), but one of her favorite roles is working with new, young faculty.

“It’s a personal thing for me, but it’s one of the coolest things I’m involved in,” she said. “When they come to Georgia Tech, they see how big this place is, bigger than a company. I like to say to them, ‘Let’s calm down, take a breath, you’re good, so let’s go make some cool stuff. Let’s get some momentum going.’”

For Raychowdhury, director of the new Center for the Co-Design of Cognitive Systems (part of the JUMP 2.0 program), developing the skilled workforce of the future means answering the call of the nation.

“This is one of the largest ECE departments in the country, with many, many talented students,” he said. “And given the need and shortage of skilled professionals in this particular area, I think it’s critical for us to create that kind of pipeline.” Last year, ECE undergraduate students started taking a new, two-semester course, sponsored by Apple, in which they actually build microprocessors from scratch.

“This is completely new,” Raychowdhury said. “It’s expensive to offer this course, but we plan to keep doing it and we’re in conversations with other companies that want to invest in workforce development. So, in addition to doing fantastic research, we want to be sensitive to the needs of the country and a new generation.”

 

Professor Omer Inan is set to take the stage at the upcoming TEDxAtlanta 2023: We Rise event on May 19.

As the Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Chair in bioscience and bioengineering in Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Inan designs clinically relevant medical devices and systems and translates them from the lab to patient care applications. In his talk, Inan will be discussing his groundbreaking research on wearable healthcare technologies and the potential they hold for revolutionizing the field.

Inan is a member of the prestigious Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows (elected in 2022) for his “outstanding contributions to the non-invasive assessment of the mechanical aspects of cardiovascular health and performance using wearable devices.” Additional achievements include an Academy Award for Technical Achievement from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (The Oscars, 2021), the Georgia Power Professor of Excellence for the College of Engineering (2019), and the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program award (NSF CAREER, 2018).

TEDxAtlanta 2023: WE RISE brings together an impressive group of participants from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. The speakers include entrepreneurs, activists, educators, artists, scientists, and many other changemakers who have risen above challenges to make a positive impact on the world.

The event's participants will share their stories and insights on how they have overcome adversity, embraced innovation, and challenged the status quo to make a difference in their communities and beyond. Through their talks, they will inspire and empower attendees to rise above their own challenges and take action towards creating a better future for all.

TEDxAtlanta 2023: WE RISE will take place on Friday, May 19 from 9 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. at the Rialto Center for the Arts (80 Forsyth Street Northwest Atlanta, GA 30303). Learn more and purchase tickets at tedxatlanta.com.

Women make up just 24% of the automotive industry, but Georgia Tech graduates Jenn Voelker and Julia Vorpahl haven't let statistics stop them from paving their own way in a male-dominated field.

Both Voelker and Vorpahl work for Karma Automotive, a luxury electric vehicle manufacturer based in California. Beginning with their time at Tech, they've never let gender bias stop them from pursuing their passion.

"It's math," Vorpahl, a visualization and digital design modeler at Karma, said. "You either get the question right, or you get the question wrong. I think that attitude really helps when you get into a professional environment. It teaches you to have tougher skin where if you are the best for that job, you will get the job. That's what Georgia Tech instilled."

Vorpahl grew up in the industry watching her family operate what is now the oldest independently owned Mercedes-Benz dealer in metro Atlanta after her grandfather, an engine designer for the German automaker, came to America and opened the shop in 1967. She arrived at Georgia Tech unsure if she'd follow in her family's footsteps, but ultimately, she landed an internship at Daimler, the nation's largest commercial vehicle manufacturer.

While other interns came in with a background in automotive design, Vorpahl’s willingness to learn and tireless work ethic landed her a full-time job as the only woman in the company's design studio.

During her three years at Daimler before accepting her position at Karma in 2022, she'd occasionally make the drive from Portland, Oregon, back to Georgia. Along the way, she crossed paths with truckers, who often expressed surprise that Vorpahl was among those behind the scenes designing their rigs. She often heard questions like “Why do you work there?” or “How did you end up there?”

And her response was simple. "Women like cars, too.” 

That rang true through Voelker's childhood as well. When the senior director of program management for Karma arrived in Atlanta for her first year at Georgia Tech, she knew she'd found a place that could help her turn an aptitude for math and science, and a fervor for cars, into a career.

"Best move I ever made," Voelker said on her decision to enroll at Tech, although it wasn't just the Institute's stellar reputation that lured her from her home state of New Hampshire. "I visited campus in February. There was 6 feet of snow on the ground and then I came to Atlanta, and the flowers were blooming."

After changing her major from mechanical engineering to industrial design, Voelker got her foot in the door through an internship with Masterack, a commercial cargo vehicle equipment manufacturer based in Atlanta. She attended Tech at a time when women made up around 27% of the undergraduate population, so when she entered the workforce, she wasn't fazed. "It never bothered me. I have always felt like I fit right in, especially when it's the right school, the right class, or the right company where everybody appreciates learning from each other and working together towards a common goal," she said.

In fact, her experience on North Avenue taught her to always keep learning and never give up, a piece of advice she now passes along to other women entering the industry.

"Don’t be afraid to give your opinion in meetings, speak up and use all of the knowledge that you've learned over the years toward whatever project you're working on," said Voelker, who worked her way up the ladder at Masterack for 18 years before seeking a new challenge at Karma. “That's one thing that I haven't backed down on. If I have a strong opinion about something, I have no fear of saying it.”

Vorpahl and Voelker each commended Karma for their dedication to promoting hard-working women and a culture that fosters diversity — a principle that Vorpahl especially values after completing two study abroad programs at the University of Singapore and the University of Strathclyde.

“One of the biggest advantages was seeing how people from different countries approach design and how different schools approach design. You don’t want a bunch of people who all think exactly the same way. Otherwise, we’d all be driving around in the exact same vehicle,” she said.

Leading Karma’s commercial vehicle product line, Voelker noted that she has continued to see more women in leadership positions and at industry conferences, and she hopes that momentum carries over to the next generation. Highlighting the importance of igniting both young girls’ and boys' interest in STEM, Voelker recently spoke to a local second grade class to share her experiences.

"I've been really fortunate to have had some great mentors over my career, so I love to pay it forward to the younger generation," she said. "They were so excited, and I hope that stays with them and excites them to learn more about engineering."

In addition to providing an example to young women of how to succeed in a competitive industry, Vorpahl also hopes to share the technical aspects of what she's learned in the field with her alma mater and offer future graduates a roadmap to a career in automotive design.

"The students would thrive in this industry because it is so nitpicky, and Tech minds would just love it," she said. "There's not really a direct path from the Georgia Tech studios into car studios, so I'm hoping that I can show them that path."

Voelker and Vorpahl are bonded by their employer and their alma mater, but it’s their shared passion for seeing their hard work hit the pavement that continues to drive them.  

Idling at a crossroads no longer, the automotive industry is embracing electrification like never before. With more electric vehicles purchased in 2022 than any year prior, consumers are beginning to follow their lead. Yet, while opportunity abounds, new challenges will require an innovative approach to ensure a sustainable and accessible electric future for all.

With historic investments from major players in the EV space, including Rivian, Kia, and Hyundai, the state of Georgia is uniquely positioned to serve as a leader in this effort. As the state's leading research institute, Georgia Tech is on the cutting edge of the movement. 

The transportation sector is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the U.S. at nearly 30%, with passenger vehicles accounting for around 80% of the sector's total output1 as of 2019. Electric vehicles are widely regarded as a budding solution to reduce emissions, but even as both demand and production continue to increase, EVs currently account for around 1% of the cars on America's roadways. 

From the supply chain to the infrastructure needed to support alternative-fuel vehicles alongside consumer hesitancy, achieving the goals set by both the public and private sectors — including the Biden Administration's target of EVs making up at least 50% of new car sales by 2030 — will not be easy. Through research and development, policy, and collaboration, Tech experts are working toward finding solutions that will serve as catalysts during this transitionary period for the environment and the way Americans drive.

Check out the full story. 

In the decade since Professor Gleb Yushin’s battery materials startup participated in Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center, investments in the company have rolled in — along with the first customers.

Now the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is getting on board with Yushin’s Georgia Tech startup as part of federal efforts to reinvigorate tech manufacturing in the United States.

DOE awarded Sila Nanotechnologies $100 million this fall to support the company’s new factory in Moses Lake, Washington, and help Sila hire and train up to 300 workers for the facility. It was one of 21 projects funded in domestic battery materials processing and manufacturing.

“It’s our mission to help move America away from being energy dependent and become a leader in the energy transformation,” said Yushin, the company’s chief technology officer and a faculty member in the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering. “With this funding, Sila will deliver proven, clean energy technology and world-scale manufacturing to revitalize the industry and gain independence.”

Birthed from Yushin’s research on lithium-ion batteries, Sila manufactures next-generation materials and a silicon anode technology that boosts battery energy density by 20%. The silicon anodes are a drop-in replacement for graphite anodes in lithium-ion batteries. The new facility is projected to produce enough capacity to power 200,000 electric vehicles by 2026. Sila has inked a deal with Mercedes-Benz to use the company’s technology, starting with G-Class vehicles.

Read the full story on the College of Engineering website.

The Scalable Asymmetric Lifecycle En­gage­ment Microelectronics Work­force Development program (SCALE) has announced the program will extend another five years and expand with $10.8 million additional Department of Defense (DoD) funding, with a ceiling of $99 million.

SCALE officials said this expansion of the nation’s preeminent program will further its goal to develop a next-generation workforce that can return the United States to prominence in global microelectronics manufacturing.

Georgia Tech participates in the partnership, which is led by Purdue University and managed by NSWC Crane. SCALE facilitates the training of highly skilled U.S. microelectronics engineers, hardware designers and manufacturing experts. SCALE brings together a public-private-academic partnership of 17 universities and 34 partners within the defense industry and government. 

“This is an extremely exciting time in the country and at Tech for microchip design and manufacturing,” said Arijit Raychowdhury, the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). “These newly announced funds for the SCALE program will help Georgia Tech recruit a new, diverse group of students ready to work in defense microelectronics. We’re thrilled to be a SCALE partner university and honored to be leading many of the project’s specialty areas.”

SCALE provides unique courses, mentoring, internship matching and targeted research projects for college students interested in five microelectronics specialty areas. Georgia Tech ECE faculty members will be the primary investigators for three of the areas: 

• system on a chip will be led by Raychowdhury;
• radiation-hardening will be led by John Cressler;
• and heterogeneous integration/advanced packaging will be led by Madhavan Swaminathan.

The other two focus areas are embedded system security/trusted AI and supply chain awareness.

Industry and government partners regularly meet and update a list of knowledge, skills, and abilities important for new entrants to the workforce. The SCALE universities then update their curriculum to ensure the students are prepared for upcoming needs in the rapidly advancing microelectronics field.

Peter Bermel, SCALE director and the Elmore Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue, said the United States will need 50,000 trained semiconductor engineers to meet overwhelming and rapidly growing demand.

“The United States is committed to expanding and strengthening its semiconductor industry and workforce rapidly over the next five years,” Bermel said. “SCALE takes a holistic approach to the microelectronics workforce gap by comprehensively addressing system challenges for workforce training and recruiting.”

Goals for the next five years include:

• Expanding student participation in SCALE fivefold to more than 1,000.
• Developing learning models for K-12 classrooms.
• Collaborating with community colleges nationwide to develop microelectronics classes.

The demand for microelectronics increased by 26.2% in 2021. But while the United States consumes about half of the chips produced worldwide, the country only manufactures about 12%, highlighting the pressing need for the U.S. to strengthen its domestic semiconductor supply chains and increase industrial capacity.

The funding announcement is the latest highlight in Georgia Tech’s leadership role in bolstering microelectronics and workforce development. Tech’s large engineering and science faculty bring a broad set of research expertise to strengthen the country’s semiconductor capacity. The Institute is uniquely positioned to train the microelectronics workforce, drive future microelectronics advances, and provide fabrication and packaging facilities for industry, academic and government partners to develop and test new solutions.

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The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 44,000 students, representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

 

The Materials Characterization Facility (MCF) at Georgia Tech has installed a new inorganic m spectrometry facility. The facility includes two new inductively couple plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) systems: a Thermo iCAP RQ quadrupole ICP-MS for streamlined and high-throughput determinations of elemental concentrations and a Thermo Neoma multicollector ICP-MS with collision cell technology for the precise determinations of isotope ratios within a given sample.

Each instrument can measure elemental variability in both dissolved aqueous samples as well as solids/minerals via laser ablation microsampling from a Teledyne Iridia laser ablation system. Together the system can measure isotopes at precision in elemental systems from Li and U.

Planned applications include: (1) high-resolution measurements of Ca, Sr, Ba, Mg, and B elemental and isotopic variability in seawater and marine and terrestrial carbonates for paleoclimate reconstructions, (2) (U-Th)/Pb dating and Hf isotope measurements to study the origin of critical mineral deposits, with a potential engineering application and the development of novel methods for increasing precision/accuracy and minimizing sample consumption during routine analyses of water quality and environmental contamination.

The MCF welcomes users interested in these and other potential applications of this new facility to their scientific and engineering research to contact David Tavakoli (atavakoli6@gatech.edu).

A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Georgia Institute of Technology has 3D printed a dual-phase, nanostructured high-entropy alloy that exceeds the strength and ductility of other state-of-the-art additively manufactured materials, which could lead to higher-performance components for applications in aerospace, medicine, energy and transportation. The research, led by Wen Chen, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass, and Ting Zhu, professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, was published in the August issue of the journal Nature.

Over the past 15 years, high entropy alloys (HEAs) have become increasingly popular as a new paradigm in materials science. Comprised of five or more elements in near-equal proportions, they offer the ability to create a near-infinite number of unique combinations for alloy design. Traditional alloys, such as brass, carbon steel, stainless steel and bronze, contain a primary element combined with one or more trace elements.

Additive manufacturing, also called 3D printing, has recently emerged as a powerful approach of material development. The laser-based 3D printing can produce large temperature gradients and high cooling rates that are not readily accessible by conventional routes. However, “the potential of harnessing the combined benefits of additive manufacturing and HEAs for achieving novel properties remains largely unexplored,” says Zhu.

Chen and his team in the Multiscale Materials and Manufacturing Laboratory combined an HEA with a state-of-the-art 3D printing technique called laser powder bed fusion to develop new materials with unprecedented properties. Because the process causes materials to melt and solidify very rapidly as compared to traditional metallurgy, “you get a very different microstructure that is far-from-equilibrium” on the components created, Chen says. This microstructure looks like a net and is made of alternating layers known as face-centered cubic (FCC) and body-centered cubic (BCC) nanolamellar structures embedded in microscale eutectic colonies with random orientations. The hierarchical nanostructured HEA enables co-operative deformation of the two phases.

“This unusual microstructure’s atomic rearrangement gives rise to ultrahigh strength as well as enhanced ductility, which is uncommon, because usually strong materials tend to be brittle,” Chen says. Compared to conventional metal casting, “we got almost triple the strength and not only didn’t lose ductility, but actually increased it simultaneously,” he says. “For many applications, a combination of strength and ductility is key. Our findings are original and exciting for materials science and engineering alike.”

“The ability to produce strong and ductile HEAs means that these 3D printed materials are more robust in resisting applied deformation, which is important for lightweight structural design for enhanced mechanical efficiency and energy saving,” says Jie Ren, Chen’s Ph.D. student and first author of the paper.

Zhu’s group at Georgia Tech led the computational modeling for the research. He developed dual-phase crystal plasticity computational models to understand the mechanistic roles played by both the FCC and BCC nanolamellae and how they work together to give the material added strength and ductility. 

“Our simulation results show the surprisingly high strength yet high hardening responses in the BCC nanolamellae, which are pivotal for achieving the outstanding strength-ductility synergy of our alloy. This mechanistic understanding provides an important basis for guiding the future development of 3D printed HEAs with exceptional mechanical properties,” Zhu says.

In addition, 3D printing offers a powerful tool to make geometrically complex and customized parts. In the future, harnessing 3D printing technology and the vast alloy design space of HEAs opens ample opportunities for the direct production of end-use components for biomedical and aerospace applications.

Additional research partners on the paper include Texas A&M University, the University of California Los Angeles, Rice University, and Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories.

Story by Melinda Rose, Associate News Editor at UMass Amherst. 

By Frida Carrera

 

On Wednesday, April 13th 2022, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) hosted the 16th annual Spring Undergraduate Research Symposium. UROP’s annual symposium is Georgia Tech’s largest undergraduate research colloquium and allows students to present their research and gain valuable skills and presentation experience. Each year the symposium also presents awards to the top poster and oral presentation from each college and honors the Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher (OUR) from each college. And with over 40 oral presentations and nearly 90 poster presentations, this year’s symposium proved to be another success for UROP and Georgia Tech.  

This year the symposium was held in Exhibition Hall and opened with an introduction and keynote address to students, faculty, and other non-presenters. Shortly after, the event moved into the poster presentations segment where undergraduate students displayed their research to judges, faculty, and other attendees. The oral presentations followed soon after and gave student researchers the opportunity to go more in-depth with their research and findings and answer any questions the judges and attendees had. To end the event, sponsoring colleges and departments recognized Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers from their respective colleges. Additionally, the symposium judges were tasked with selecting the top student researchers having exceptional poster and oral presentations. 

Any Georgia Tech undergraduate student interested in presenting their research is encouraged to apply for future symposiums and to build on research presentation skills, connect with other undergraduate researchers and faculty, and the chance to be recognized with awards by members of the Georgia Tech research community. UROP also hosts other research-related events and workshops throughout the school year to assist undergraduate students interested in research and build on their passions! 

To view the list of awardees and pictures from the event visit: https://symposium.urop.gatech.edu/awards/ 

To learn more about undergraduate research at Georgia Tech visit: https://urop.gatech.edu/

ECE Ph.D. student Nujhat Tasneem has won the Ed Nicollian Award for best student paper at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Semiconductor Interface Specialist Conference (SISC). The event was held in early December 2021 with awards being announced in March 2022.

Tasneem’s presentation, “Charge Trapping Effects on Memory Window in Ferroelectric Field Effect Transistors,” was the highest rated presentation based on the feedback of SISC committee members and invited speakers. She is the first Georgia Tech student to receive the award.

The award-winning paper introduced a novel electrical characterization method to track carrier capture and emission dynamics during write operations in n-type ferroelectric-field-effect transistors (FEFETs). FEFETs are a candidate for high-density, non-volatile, embedded memory applications due to their promise of having low operating voltages and write energies combined with low-leakage, and high-density integration. While significant work has been done to explain the operation and endurance of FEFETs, this research details a superior method of measurement because it provides an understanding of the transport and the status of the ferroelectric.

“This novel characterization method sheds a light on the underlying device physics of FEFETs, which is necessary to optimize its design, especially as a non-volatile memory (NVM) element” said Tasneem.

Tasneem is currently part of the The Khan Lab headed by ECE Assistant Professor Asif Khan. The work presented was supported by the ASCENT project (Applications and Systems-driven Center for Energy-Efficient integrated Nano Technologies), one of six centers supported by SRC’s Joint University Microelectronics Program (JUMP). Fabrication at Tech was done at the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN), supported by the National Science Foundation- National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NSF-NNCI) program.

The SISC Ed Nicollian Award for best student paper was established in 1995 in honor of Professor E.H. Nicollian, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Nicollian was a pioneer in the exploration of the metal-oxide-semiconductor system, particularly in the area of electrical measurements. His efforts were fundamental to establishing the SISC in its early years.