[FOSSDEM 2024] Open PDK Initiative

FOSDEM 2024 was a two-day event organized by volunteers to promote the widespread use of free and open source software. Took place at the ULB Solbosch campus in the beautiful city of Brussels (Belgium), FOSDEM is widely recognized as the best FOSS conference in Europe.

There were two DevRooms to discuss the status and further FOSS CAD/EDA IC design tools developments and open PDK initiative:

• Libre-SOC, FPGA and VLSI DevRoom
• Verilog-AMS in Gnucap
• FOSS CAD/EDA tools supporting the open access PDK initiative
• Open Hardware and CAD/CAM DevRoom
• ngspice circuit simulator - stand-alone and embedded into KiCad

FOSDEM'24 Inauguration Session

[paper] Fast-SPICE Circuit Simulation

A New Second Order Nonlinear Formulation for Fast-SPICE Circuit Simulation

A. Elhamshary1, Y. Ismail2, Y. A. Aziz3 and H. Ragae1

IEEE Access, DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3367992

1 Electronics and Communication Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University
2 Center Nanoelectronics and Device, American University, Cairo, Egypt
3 Department of Physics, School of Sciences and Engineering, the American University, Cairo, Egypt
*US patent pending USPTO Application #: 63/606,212

Abstract: A new second-order matrix formulation is proposed in this work to model any nonlinear electronic system. This new formulation is developed and implemented by using a recasting method that increases the number of variables but limits the non-linearity to a quadratic form. The nonlinearity is modeled without any approximation and can model complex nonlinearities such as exponential and Tanh-based models. The new quadratic method is applied to the extended Tanh MOSFET model and an exponential diode model to illustrate the power and reliability of this method. The method also has the advantage of directly stamping transistors and diodes into matrix forms in ways similar to linear elements. To demonstrate the validity of the new formulation, several circuits are examined, and the results compare very well to SPICE simulations. The simulation time as well as numerical stability improve significantly when using time marching techniques with the quadratic formulation as compared to directly stamping transistor and diode exponential nonlinearities.

Fig: Three-transistors circuit with C=10pF: a) the circuit diagram,

b) the output voltage results for the three transistors are on

Summer School on Organic Electronics and Neuromorphic Systems

Summer School on Organic Electronics and Neuromorphic Systems

June 17-20, 2024

will consist of a comprehensive set of classes aimed at doctoral or postdoctoral level researchers from both industry and academia. By means of a programme consisting of lectures, tutorials, advanced discussion groups, students will expand and refine their knowledge of organic materials, devices and circuits for microelectronics, as well as of neuromorphic devices and circuits with the world’s leading experts in these fields.

This Summer School is sponsored by the EU-funded BAYFLEX (Bayesian Inference with Flexible electronics for biomedical Applications) project. It is organized by the Department of Electronic, Electrical and Automatic Control Engineering (DEEEiA) of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), in Tarragona. The Chair of the Summer School is Prof. Benjamin Iñiguez.

PhD students can present posters showing some of their results in a session on June 20 afternoon. Interested PhD students can submit short abstracts of the results they want to present in the Poster Session.

Invited Speakers

• Jiri Pfleger, Czech Academy of Sciences (organic memristors),  
• Luisa Petti, University of Bolzano (organic electronics), 
• Chiara Bartollozzi, Italian Institute of Technology, Italy (event driven vision/robotics, CMOS) (neuromorphic), 
• Wilfred G. van der Wiel, Chair NanoElectronics Group | Director BRAINS Center for Brain-Inspired Nano Systems (organic +neuromorphic), 
• Sébastien Sanaur, IMT, France (neuromorphic), 
• François Danneville, IEMN, Lille, France (spiking neurons), 
• Simone Fabiano, University of Linköping, Sweden (organic + neuromorphic), 

Mini-Colloquium:

• Lluís F. Marsal, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain, 
• Arokia Nathan, University of Cambridge, Darwin College, UK, 

• Paul Berger, Ohio State University, USA, 
• Radu A. Sporea, University of Surrey, UK, 
• Angèle Reynders, TU-Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 

[paper] THz Measurements, Antennas, and Simulations

Fawad Sheikh 1, Andreas Prokscha 1, Johannes M. Eckhardt 2, Tobias Doeker 2, Naveed A. Abbasi 3, Jorge Gomez-Ponce 3,4, Benedikt Sievert 5, Jan Taro Svejda 5, Andreas Rennings 5, Jan Barowski 6, Christian Schulz 6, Ilona Rolfes 6, Daniel Erni 5, Andreas F. Molisch 3, Thomas Kürner 2, and Thomas Kaiser 1

THz Measurements, Antennas, and Simulations: From the Past to the Future

Invited Paper in IEEE Journal of Microwaves, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 289-304, Jan. 2023

DOI: 10.1109/JMW.2022.3216210

1 Institute of Digital Signal Processing, UDE, Duisburg (D)

2 Institute for Communications Technology, TU Braunschweig (D)

3 Wireless Devices and Systems Group, University of Southern California, Los Angeles (USA) 
4 ESPOL, Facultad de Ingeniería en Electricidad y Computación, Guayaquil (EC)
5 ATE, University of Duisburg-Essen, and CENIDE Duisburg (D)
6 Institute of Microwave Systems, Ruhr University, Bochum (D)

Abstract: In recent years, terahertz (THz) systems have become an increasingly popular area of research thanks to their unique properties such as extremely high data rates towards Tb/s, submillimeter localization accuracy, high resolution remote sensing of materials, and remarkable advances in photonics and electronics technologies. This article traces the progress of the THz measurements, antennas and simulations, from historical milestones to the current state of research and provides an outlook on the remaining challenges.

FIG: Realized gain measurement of the integrated antenna prototype compared to the estimation of the corresponding equivalent circuit (EC) model in E- and H-plane at 290GHz (a)

and micrograph of the antenna prototype (b)

Acknowledgment: This work was supported in part by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for Projects M01, M02, M03, M04, C05, and S03, under Project 287022738 TRR 196, in part by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MKW NRW) through Project terahertz.NRW, and in part by the Open Access Publication Fund of the University of Duisburg-Essen. The work of Jorge Gomez-Ponce was supported by Foreign Fulbright Ecuador SENESCYT Program. The work of Johannes M. Eckhardt, Tobias Doeker, and Thomas Kürner was supported in part by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany, through 6G Research and Innovation Cluster 6G-RIC under Grant 16KISK031 and in part by German Research Foundation (DFG) under Grant FOR 2863, “Meteracom - Metrology for THz Communications.” The work of Jorge Gomez-Ponce, Naveed A. Abbasi, and Andreas F. Molisch was supported by SRC, DARPA, NSF, NIST, and Samsung Research America through ComSenTer Program. This work did not involve human subjects nor animals in its research.

List of the publications using or referring to DEVSIM

List of the publications using or referring to DEVSIM

[1] K. Wang et al.; Design and simulation of a novel 4H-SiC LGAD timing device; Radiation detection technology and methods; (2023) https://doi.org/10.1007/s41605-023-00431-y
[2] J. Lauwaert; Technology computer aided design based deep level transient spectra: Simulation of high-purity germanium crystals; Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics; (2022) https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6463/ac34ad
[3] Q. Chen et al.; Analytical model for donor like Gaussian traps in organic thin-film transistor; Organic Electronics; (2021) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgel.2022.106464
[4] Q. Chen et al.; The Impact of Contact Position on the Retention Performance in Thin-Film Ferroelectric Transistors; Physica Status Solidi A; (2021) https://doi.org/10.1002/pssa.202100408
[5] L. Hulbert; Designing a Simulator for an Electrically-Pumped Organic Laser Diode; Master’s Thesis; (2019) https://doi.org/10.15368/theses.2019.60
[6] J. E. Sanchez and Q. Chen; Element Edge Based Discretization for TCAD Device Simulation; IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices; (2021) https://doi.org/10.1109/TED.2021.3094776
[7] J. Lauwaert; Fill Factor Loss in a Recombination Junction for Monolithic Tandem Solar Cells; ACS Appl. Energy Mater.; (2023) https://doi.org/10.1021/acsaem.3c00041
[8] J. E. Sanchez; DEVSIM: A TCAD Semiconductor Device Simulator; Journal of Open Source Software; (2022) https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.03898
[9] L. Rickert et al.; High-performance designs for fiber-pigtailed quantum-light sources based on quantum dots in electrically-controlled circular Bragg gratings; Optics Express; (2023) https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.486060
[10] L. R. Brennaman & A. J. Samin; Insights into the performance of InAs-based devices in extreme environments from multiscale simulations; Applied Physics A; (2023) https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-023-06756-1
[11] M. D. K Jones et al.; Modelling Interfaces in Thin-Film Photovoltaic Devices; Frontiers in Chemistry; (2022) https://doi.org/10.3389/fchem.2022.920676
[12] R. Sellers et al.; fabrication and modeling study to reduce valence band offset in HgCdTe MWIR nBn photodetectors grown on silicon using superlattice barriers; Proc. SPIE PC12687, Infrared Sensors, Devices, and Applications XIII,; (2023) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2677394
[13] TANG Zhenglai and CAO Bingyang ; Simulations of self-heating effects and the heat generation mechanisms in SOI-MOS devices; Microelectronics & Computer; (2023) https://doi.org/10.19304/J.ISSN1000-7180.2023.0630
[14] Kotecha et al.; Modeling Needs for Power Semiconductor Devices and Power Electronics Systems; IEDM (2019) (2019) https://doi.org/10.1109/IEDM19573.2019.8993449