Sep 19, 2007

Out-of-Topic: Smiley emoticon

It is a very out-of-topic post, but I think that it is quite important, culturally speaking. Today (September 19th, 2007), this emoticon :-) becomes 25 years old. Visit the homepage of its creator ( Scott E. Fahlman ) for more information.

Sep 18, 2007

ISPSD'09

The 21st IEEE International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices and ICs will take place in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain) on June 14-18.

The deadline for abstract submission is October 24 2008.

ISPSD is the main international conference on the areas of power semiconductor devices, power integrated circuits, their hybrid technologies, and applications.

Topics include: processes, materials, CAD/Simulation, devices, power ICs, packaging and applications.

For researchers interested in compact modeling of power semiconductor devices, ISPSD is a top event to present and get to know the last results in this field. "Device & circuit simulation" is explicitly mentioned as one of the subtopic in the "CAD/Simulation" topic. Compact modeling fits very well this subject. And of course, there is a subtopic of "Modeling" in the "Device" topic.

The Conference will take place mainly at the Axa Winterthur Auditorium but some parallel sessions will be held at the NH Constanza Hotel which is just beside the Auditorium.

Certainly Barcelona is a wonderful place to have such an important event. There are many superb attractions in Barcelona: historical landmarks, the well-known modernistic buildings in Gaudi-style, the "Barri Gòtic" (middle-age downtown), the Museum of Fine Arts, or the stadium of the Barça Football Club. And one can find nice beaches very close to Barcelona. The weather in June is usually very good, warm enough to go to the beach, without been too hot.



The last edition of ISPSD was a success.

The 20th IEEE International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices and ICs (ISPSD) was held May 18–22, 2008, in Orlando, Florida, USA.

The venue of ISPSD'08 was the Windham Orlando Resort, a tropical paradise located just outside the entrance to the Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.


The General Program Chairman was Professor T. Paul Chow, from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), in Troy NY. Prof. Chow is a recognized authority in the field of power devices and circuits.

Sep 17, 2007

ICCDCS'08

The 7th International Caribbean Conference on Devices, Circuits and Systems has just released the call for papers. This conference is biannually held in different locations near the Caribbean Sea, and is a very inspiring place to present new results. This edition will be held on 28-30 April, 2008, in Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico, which is near many interesting archaeological sites, as well as touristic resorts. If you want more information, visit their homepage, but I would not think twice about going there.... (the deadline is on January, 18, so you have plenty of time...)

Sep 16, 2007

New compact modeling papers published in IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices

The September issue of IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices includes an Special Issue on Simulation and Modeling of Nanoelectronics Devices, where most papers are about numeriocal modeling and simulations.

Among the regular papers, there are many about compact modeling. It is certainly a very hot topic!

My former and excellent Ph D student Hamdy Abd El Hamid has published a great work presenting a 3D analytical model for the subthreshold swing in FinFETs. This work was done in collaboration with researchers from the SOI group at the Universite catholique de Louvain: Prof. Denis Flandre and Dr Valeria Kilchytska.

J. Deng and H-S. P. Wong present very interesting analytical models of electrostatic gate capacitance of 1-D field-effect transistors (FETs) with multiple cylindrical conducting channels. The observed agreement with 3D numerical simulations is very good. The paper also shows that effective ways to improve device speed areincreasing the number of channels per gate and reducing the gate height.

R. Kaur et al. present a unified subthreshold model for sub-100-nm nonuniformly doped channel MOSFET. The model is shown to be valid for different lateral and transverse channel-engineered structures, by comparing with 2D simulations. Based on the results obtained, the authors propose a novel device architecture incorporating the benefits of asymmetric halo and LDD doping.

W. Bian et al. present an analytic potential-based model for the undoped surrounding-gate MOSFETs. It is based on the same approach as the paper by D. Jimenez et al,as well as the one by B. Iñiguez et al. but is written on a potential-based formulation.

S. Locci et al. present an analytical model for cylindrical thin-film transistors, which was validated by comparison with experimental results. The authors also compare the performances of cylindrical TFTs with those of planar TFTs.

S. Bayshia et al. propose an analytical subthreshold surface potential model for dual-material gate MOSFETs which considers a varying depth of the channel depletion layer. Good agreement was found with 2D numerical simulations.

A. S. Roy and C. C. Enz develop an analytical large-signal cyclo-stationary low-Frequency noise with arbitrary periodic input. They show that an averaged time constant and an averaged trap density can model the cyclo-stationarity of RTS and flicker noise, respectively.

R. Grazner, F. Schwierz and V. M. Polyakov present an analytical model describing the effects of 2D quantum–mechanical carrier confinement on the threshold voltage of undoped multiple-gate MOSFETs. This model was valiudated by a comparison with self-consistent solutions of 1-D and 2-D Schroedinger and Poisson equations.

M. I. B. Shams et al. show in their paper that in a C-V model of ultrathin gate dielectric MOS devices it is necessary to include the dependence on the barrier height at the Si–dielectric interface and the substrate doping density, and they propose an empirical equation which considers these effects.

S. Kristiansson, F. Ingvarsson and K. O. Jeppsson present a compact spreading resistance model for substrate noise coupling analysis which uses no fitting parameters and is also scalable with the resistivity and thickness of the substrate, as well as with the contact size.

CMRF 2007

The 2007 Workshop on Compact Modeling for RF/Microwave Applications (CMRF'07), organized in conjunction with the IEEE Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM2007) will be held on October 3 2007 in Boston, Massachussets.

CMRF 2007 is sponsored by the Delft Institute for Micro-electronics and Submicrontechnology and technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Electron Devices Society.

CMRF is focused on the compact modeling for RF and microwave applications, but not only of bipolar devices. Papers on RF and microwave FET devices can also be presented at CMRF. In fact, CMRF has become a very useful event to get a good picture of the state-of-the-art in this field, and discuss the new trends on compact modeling for RF and microwave applications of all types of devices.

The 2007 edition of CMRF will consist on four sessions: SiGe Compact Modeling, Analog Circuit Verification, III-V compact modeling, and Advanced Characterization and Modeling for RF Power Applications.


Besides, this year CMRF will include a meeting of experts from advanced SiGe technology and from III-V technology.