1998 Technical Excellence Awards
(Text of speech given by Dr. Michael Polcari, SRC Board of Directors Chair,
on June 30, 1999.)
The SRC Technical Excellence Award is given annually to researchers who,
over a period of years, have demonstrated creative, consistent contributions to
the field of semiconductor research, who are ground breakers and leaders in
their fields, and who are regarded as model collaborators with their colleagues
in the SRC member community.
Sung-Mo (Steve) Kang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Modeling, Simulation and Design Guidelines for VLSI Reliability
It is well known that Electro-static Discharge(ESD) and Electrical
Overstress (EOS) phenomena pose significant reliability concerns for
semiconductor devices, particularly because design rules related to I/Os don't
scale with technology. This means each technology generation must be re-done
completely with regards to I/O design. Any tool that simplifies this complex
and time-consuming procedure is highly relevant to the IC community.
A key contributor in this area is Professor Sung-Mo (Steve) Kang, at the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Professor Kang received his Ph.D. in
1975 from University of California, Berkeley. He is a Professor and Head of the
Department of Electrical Engineering at Illinois. He has been involved with
SRC- funded research efforts for over 10 years, and has been the SRC Principal
Investigator on the research effort to develop Modeling, Simulation, and Design
Guidelines for VLSI Reliability for a good part of tenure with the SRC research
program.
The work of Professor Sung-Mo (Steve) Kang at the University of over the
last five years has proven critical to the development of concepts and software
tools that address the problems of reliability, especially as relates to ESO
and ESD. The software tools he and his team have developed have been invaluable
to a number of SRC member companies as they have created new technology
generations.
In particular, Professor Kang introduced the Power Profile Technique as an
effective method to assess the EOS/ESD reliability of IC pins. He has developed
and successfully demonstrated the electro-thermal simulator iETSIM to
understand the design issues of EOS/ESD protection devices and circuits. Two
patents have been filed on the design concepts, and Professor Kang has been
proactive in transferring the software to a number of SRC member companies.
Additionally, Professor Kang identified clear design and layout guidelines
to reduce the EOS/ESD failures at IC pins for CMOS and BiCMOS technologies, and
demonstrated the importance of chip capacitance parasitics on improving EOS/ESD
reliability. He also successfully implemented MOS model equations into a SPICE
circuit simulator to extend its capability to simulate with ease the high
current I-V curves under ESD conditions, which led to a significant improvement
of the simulator.
Professor Kang's nominators point to the transfer of iETSIM to Texas
Instruments, AMD, HP, Intel, IBM, and LSI Logic whose use of iETSIM gave them
greater confidence in the reliability of their designs before they committed
them to silicon.
The awards committee applauds the excellent contributions of Professor Kang
in the area of Modeling, Simulation, and Design Guidelines for VLSI
Reliability. It is with great pleasure that I present the 1998 SRC Technical
Excellence Award to Professor Sung-Mo (Steve) Kang of the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
David Joy, University of Tennessee
Ultra Low Energy Electron Imaging for Metrology at 0.13 and Below
In 1998, the NTRS identified metrology as the key barrier to advances in
semiconductor technology. Very fittingly, the second 1999 Technical Excellence
Award is given to an expert in this field, Professor David Joy of the
University of Tennessee. Professor Joy's work in Ultra Low Energy Electron
Imaging for Metrology at 0.13 and Below has been directed at some of the most
complex metrology challenges - specifically in the areas of characterization
and measurement.
Professor David Joy was educated in England at Trinity College, Cambridge
and Linacre College Oxford. He spent 14 years at AT&T Bell Labs in Murray
Hill, NJ and brings to the SRC research program the finest research skills
combined with a wealth of experience in an industrial research laboratory. He
has been an SRC- funded researcher at the University of Tennessee since 1995.
The awards committee described him as a `scientist's scientist' with a passion
for understanding fundamentals and openly sharing his data and results.
His laboratory at the University of Tennessee is developing new techniques
in the fields of Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Scanning Electron
Microscopy (SEM), Scanning Tunneling and Atomic Force Microscopy, confocal
optical microscopy, and in related micro-analytical methods of energy
dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDXS) and electron loss spectroscopy (EELS).
Additionally, he is working on new areas, including the use of holography to
permit three dimensional visualization of complex biological structures.
For the SRC community, he has collected extensive data supporting his
proposal to use secondary electron micro-analysis as an alternative to x-ray
micro-analysis when the exact composition of the defect is not needed. In
addition, he has built an apparatus to study the feasibility of low energy
electron holography as a metrology tool for integrated circuits, and has
performed sophisticated theoretical calculations to determine the design of
this apparatus.
Professor Joy's research is innovative and exceptionally cost-effective. The
enthusiastic response it has received is a measure of its success. This past
year at the annual research review in Wisconsin he again received the highest
possible score in every category from every member company. One of his
nominators at ETEC summarizes the impact of the research by saying, "As
you can imagine, ETEC finds Professor Joy's work extremely important to the
success of our products. We anticipate applying his fundamental insights and
his extensive catalogs of experimental data to the design of lithography
equipment for all foreseeable technology generations."
With this statement of hope for a future where we successfully overcome the
metrology challenges facing our industry, I am pleased to award the 1998
Technical Excellence Award to Professor David Joy, of the University of
Tennessee for his work in Ultra Low Energy Electron Imaging for Metrology at
0.13 and Below.
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