9507123 Sheppard The International Junior Investigator and Postdoctoral Fellows Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twelve-month postdoctoral research visit by Dr. Scott T. Sheppard to work with Dr. Ekkehard Niemann at the Research Institute of Daimler Benz AG in Frankfurt, Germany. This research project will develop silicon carbide (SiC) integrated circuit technology for integration with SiC microsensors being developed at Daimler-Benz. The general goal is a smart sensor technology, which is a combination of a semiconductor microsensor (pressure, acceleration, deflection) and its corresponding driving and readout circuit. The research will be done in three steps: 1) Development and verification of new SPICE circuit models for SiC up to 500 degrees Celsius; 2) Implementation of new SPICE models to investigate different types of amplifier circuits in SiC; and 3) Fabrication and demonstration of a prototype IC amplifier suitable for integration with microsensor tranducers and UV photodiodes. ***
