September 16, 2011 — Whether it’s lead-free solder for package assembly or graphene for new transistors, semiconductor materials research was a dominant topic at Semiconductor Research Corporation’s TECHCON 2011, held September 12-13 in Austin, TX. In video blogs from the conference, students share their current research projects, and members of industry giants like IBM share how SRC-supported research benefits the industry.
Albert Liao, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, graduate student
Liao describes his research on graphene nanoribbons. Specifically, how thermal dissipation impacts graphene nanoribbons’ current carrying capacity. As nanoribbon width is decreases, thermal dissipation becomes more efficient, meaning that the nanoribbons beat graphene sheets in terms of current density. His team also discovered that the thermal conductivity of these graphene structures was 78 watts per meter Kelvin.
Students (from L to R): Emily Walker, Carnegie Mellon Univ.; Justin Jiang, Georgia Institute of Technology; Ian Dryg, Purdue Univ.
Walker, Carnegie Mellon University, a materials science researcher with an electronics materials focus, is working on lead-free solder recipes that withstands repeated stresses better than today’s formulas.
Adam Beece, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, graduate student.
Beece discusses his work on using computer-based simulation to discover the limits on system architectures. He also notes that a bug in the simulator affected the research results, and how they will tweak the system for more accuracy.
Points of view on TECHCON from Texas Instruments (TI) and IBM. These experienced industry leaders speak about their time at TECHCON, and how research benefits the semiconductor industry, right now and in the next generation of devices.
Ken Butler, Texas Instruments Fellow and former SRC-sponsored student.
David Onsongo, IBM, analog designer and former SRC-sponsored student.
See the full host of videos from SRC TECHCON 2011 here: http://www.electroiq.com/articles/sst/2011/09/live-from-src-techcon.html
Watch video interviews with the winners of SRC’s Aristotle and Technical Excellence Awards here: http://www.electroiq.com/articles/sst/2011/08/stanford-uc-berkeley-professors-win-src-awards.html