The steady improvement of our electrical systems' performance and versatility is due in large part to the scaling-down of transistors and the interconnects that drive them. Components on the chips have been shrunk, stacked, and more densely packed to increase functionality without expanding the systems’ tiny footprints.
But the smaller, denser arrangements present their own set of challenges, and electronics engineers and designers everywhere are seeking ways to overcome the resulting degradation in performance, reliability, and energy efficiency.
UC Santa Barbara doctoral student Junkai Jiang is one of those people, and for his work he has been awarded a prestigious PhD Student Fellowship from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Electron Devices Society (EDS).