Proposal No.: 0726741 PI Name: WANG, Albert PI's Institution: Illinois Institute of Technology Proposal Title: International: US-China Collaboration on International Research Experiences for Students with Focused Research on Super-Compact Integrated RF Inductors
Over a three year period this International Research Experience for Students (IRES) project will annually provide five U.S. undergraduates with an eight-week intensive research expereince pertaining to miniature integrated inductors for radio frequency system-on-chip integrated circuits. The proposed research builds on existing research projects and education and training initiatives developed collaboratively between the U.S. PI from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and foreign partners from the Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University (IMETU), Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJTU), and Hangzhou Dianzi University (HDU). The IRES project provides a coherent package of research and cultural activities for participating students. The research program is divided in two phases. In phase one the students will design and fabricate IC devices at IMETU and SMIC. In phase two they will design, test and simulate IC circuits at UESTC, HDU, or SJTU. IRES seminars will be organized at the end of each phase at the host Chinese institutions and at IIT for IRES students to present their project results and learning experiences. Students from underrepresented groups will be actively recruited. Post-IRES evaluation and tracking will be conducted.
This project aims to establish long-term U.S.-China partnerships to develop novel transistor-size inductors with integrated magnetic cores for multi-GHz RF ICs that are 100%-compatible with CMOS at sub-100nm nodes. The joint research has nine research tasks, including investigating new magnetic materials, new magnetic film processes, and novel techniques to fabricate RF inductors with integrated magnetic bar core arrays and designing, testing and modeling new magnetic-enhanced inductors and RF ICs in CMOS. If successful the research project will demonstrate the first true-CMOS high quality transistor-size magnetic-cored RF inductors and addresses the key challenge in realizing high performance multi-GHz RF SoCs for next-generation wireless communications.
