Sorab K. Ghandhi

Last updated

Sorab K Ghandhi
Sorab Ghandhi.jpg
Born1 January 1928
Allahabad, United Provinces of British India, British Raj
(now in Uttar Pradesh, India)
Died6 July 2018 (aged 90)
Escondido, California, United States
Alma mater University of Illinois
OccupationProfessor Emeritus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
SpouseCecilia M. Ghandhi
ChildrenKhushro, Rustom, Behram

Sorab (Soli) K. Ghandhi (1 January 1928 - 6 July 2018) was a professor Emeritus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) known for his pioneering work in electrical engineering and microelectronics education, and in the research and development of Organometallic Vapor Phase Epitaxy (OMVPE) for compound semiconductors. He was the recipient of the IEEE Education Award "For pioneering contributions to semiconductor and microelectronics education" in 2010. [1]

Contents

Education

Ghandhi was schooled at St. Joseph's College, Nainital, India, received his B.Sc. in electrical and mechanical engineering from Benares Hindu University in 1947, and his MS and Ph.D. in electronics from the University of Illinois in 1948 and 1951 respectively. He was a Zoroastrian by birth, and had three sons, Khushro, Rustom and Behram.

Career

While a member of the Advanced Circuits Group, General Electric Company, from 1951 to 1960, he co-authored the first books in the world on transistor circuits [2] and transistor circuit engineering [3] He was a manager of the Components Group at the Philco Corporation from 1960-1963. During this time, as Chairman of the IRE Standards on Graphical symbols, Task Group 28.4.8, he was instrumental in obtaining international adoption of the US-derived graphical symbol for Transistors and other Semiconductor devices. [4] He joined Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 1963 as a professor of electrophysics, and was chairman from 1967 to 1974. He retired from RPI in 1992.

At RPI, he introduced microelectronics into the graduate studies curriculum and wrote a book on this subject. [5] This was the first book in the world to elucidate the necessary background required for an engineer to participate in the semiconductor industry. In addition to basic semiconductor physics, it covered topics such as Crystal Growth, Phase Diagrams, Diffusion, Oxidation, Epitaxy, Etching and Photolithography, which were not typical of the background of electrical engineers. Subsequently, this was followed by a book on semiconductor power devices, [6] in which he presented a comprehensive theory for second breakdown. Following the work of Manasevit in 1968, [7] he started the first university program on the OMVPE of compound semiconductors in 1970, and conducted research with his students in this area until retirement. This technology has become increasingly popular, and is now used in most modern optical devices such as lasers and light emitting diodes, transmitters and receivers for fiber optic communications and improved thermoelectric structures.

His research in OMVPE included the growth and characterization of GaAs, [8] InAs, GaInAs, InP, CdTe, HgCdTe and ZnSe materials and devices, which resulted in over 180 papers. Many of these were "firsts" in the field: the growth of GaInAs over the full range of compositions, [9] the use of homostructures for evaluating recombination in surface-free GaAs, [10] the use of halogen etching in GaAs, [11] the OMVPE growth of large area films of HgCdTe with highly uniform composition [12] and the p-type doping of this HgCdTe. [13]

Concurrent with his research activities, he also wrote two books on VLSI fabrication principles which included a comprehensive, unified treatment of Silicon and GaAs materials technology. [14] and a [15] These covered, for the first time, topics relevant to Compound Semiconductors, which are increasingly playing an important role in advanced semiconductor electro-optical and communication devices and systems.

Membership

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Integrated circuit</span> Electronic circuit formed on a small, flat piece of semiconductor material

An integrated circuit is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of miniaturized transistors and other electronic components are integrated together on the chip. This results in circuits that are orders of magnitude smaller, faster, and less expensive than those constructed of discrete components, allowing a large transistor count.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CMOS</span> Technology for constructing integrated circuits

Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFETs for logic functions. CMOS technology is used for constructing integrated circuit (IC) chips, including microprocessors, microcontrollers, memory chips, and other digital logic circuits. CMOS technology is also used for analog circuits such as image sensors, data converters, RF circuits, and highly integrated transceivers for many types of communication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gallium arsenide</span> Chemical compound

Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is a III-V direct band gap semiconductor with a zinc blende crystal structure.

A thin-film transistor (TFT) is a special type of field-effect transistor (FET) where the transistor is made by thin film deposition. TFTs are grown on a supporting substrate. A common substrate is glass, because the traditional application of TFTs is in liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). This differs from the conventional bulk metal oxide field effect transistor (MOSFET), where the semiconductor material typically is the substrate, such as a silicon wafer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gallium nitride</span> Chemical compound

Gallium nitride is a binary III/V direct bandgap semiconductor commonly used in blue light-emitting diodes since the 1990s. The compound is a very hard material that has a Wurtzite crystal structure. Its wide band gap of 3.4 eV affords it special properties for applications in optoelectronic, high-power and high-frequency devices. For example, GaN is the substrate which makes violet (405 nm) laser diodes possible, without requiring nonlinear optical frequency-doubling.

In semiconductor production, doping is the intentional introduction of impurities into an intrinsic semiconductor for the purpose of modulating its electrical, optical and structural properties. The doped material is referred to as an extrinsic semiconductor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indium antimonide</span> Chemical compound

Indium antimonide (InSb) is a crystalline compound made from the elements indium (In) and antimony (Sb). It is a narrow-gap semiconductor material from the III-V group used in infrared detectors, including thermal imaging cameras, FLIR systems, infrared homing missile guidance systems, and in infrared astronomy. Indium antimonide detectors are sensitive to infrared wavelengths between 1 and 5 μm.

Indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) is a ternary alloy of indium arsenide (InAs) and gallium arsenide (GaAs). Indium and gallium are group III elements of the periodic table while arsenic is a group V element. Alloys made of these chemical groups are referred to as "III-V" compounds. InGaAs has properties intermediate between those of GaAs and InAs. InGaAs is a room-temperature semiconductor with applications in electronics and photonics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solid-state electronics</span> Electronics with semiconductor components

Solid-state electronics are semiconductor electronics: electronic equipment that use semiconductor devices such as transistors, diodes and integrated circuits (ICs). The term is also used as an adjective for devices in which semiconductor electronics that have no moving parts replace devices with moving parts, such as the solid-state relay in which transistor switches are used in place of a moving-arm electromechanical relay, or the solid-state drive (SSD) a type of semiconductor memory used in computers to replace hard disk drives, which store data on a rotating disk.

Stanley Shanfield serves as a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff and Technical Director of Advanced Hardware Development at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a post he has held since 2003. He is the holder of seven patents and has led teams responsible for inventing and manufacturing new technologies in the fields of semiconductor device fabrication and optical electronics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Depletion and enhancement modes</span> Two major types of field effect transistors

In field-effect transistors (FETs), depletion mode and enhancement mode are two major transistor types, corresponding to whether the transistor is in an on state or an off state at zero gate–source voltage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerry Woodall</span>

Jerry M. Woodall is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Davis who is widely known for his revolutionary work on LEDs and semiconductors. Over the course of his career, he has published close to 400 scientific articles and his work has directly contributed to the development of major technologies that are used around the world, such as TVs, optical fibers, and mobile phones. Woodall currently holds over 80 U.S. patents for a variety of inventions and has received prestigious awards from IBM, NASA, and the U.S. President for his contributions to science, technology, and humanity.

Surface activated bonding (SAB) is a low-temperature wafer bonding technology with atomically clean and activated surfaces. Surface activation prior to bonding by using fast atom bombardment is typically employed to clean the surfaces. High-strength bonding of semiconductor, metal, and dielectric can be obtained even at room temperature.

Indium aluminium nitride (InAlN) is a direct bandgap semiconductor material used in the manufacture of electronic and photonic devices. It is part of the III-V group of semiconductors, being an alloy of indium nitride and aluminium nitride, and is closely related to the more widely used gallium nitride. It is of special interest in applications requiring good stability and reliability, owing to its large direct bandgap and ability to maintain operation at temperatures of up to 1000 °C., making it of particular interest to areas such as the space industry. InAlN high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) are attractive candidates for such applications owing to the ability of InAlN to lattice-match to gallium nitride, eliminating a reported failure route in the closely related aluminium gallium nitride HEMTs.

Germanium-tin is an alloy of the elements germanium and tin, both located in group 14 of the periodic table. It is only thermodynamically stable under a small composition range. Despite this limitation, it has useful properties for band gap and strain engineering of silicon-integrated optoelectronic and microelectronic semiconductor devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sanjay Banerjee</span>

Sanjay Banerjee is an American engineer at the University of Texas at Austin, director of Microelectronics Research Center, and director of the Southwest Academy of Nanoelectronics (SWAN) — one of three such centers in the United States funded by the Semiconductor Research Corporation to develop a replacement for MOSFETs as part of their Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modulation doping</span>

Modulation doping is a technique for fabricating semiconductors such that the free charge carriers are spatially separated from the donors. Because this eliminates scattering from the donors, modulation-doped semiconductors have very high carrier mobilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aristos Christou</span> American engineer

Aristos Christou is an American engineer and scientist, academic professor and researcher. He is a Professor of Materials Science, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Reliability Engineering at the University of Maryland.

References

  1. ↑ "Sorab K. Ghandhi 1928 - 2018". San Diego Union-Tribune. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  2. ↑ Principles of Transistor Circuits, (Ed.R.F. Shea). John Wiley and Sons. 1953. pp. 535.
  3. ↑ Transistor Circuit Engineering, (Ed.R.F. Shea). John Wiley and Sons. 1957. pp. 468
  4. ↑ http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/First-Hand:Saving_the_Transistor_Symbol
  5. ↑ Theory and Practice of Microelectronics, John Wiley and Sons. 1968. pp.487.
  6. ↑ Semiconductor Power Devices, John Wiley and Sons. 1977.pp.329.
  7. ↑ Manasevit, H. M.; Simpson, W. I. (1969). "The use of Metal-Organics in the Preparation of Semiconductor Materials: I. Epitaxial Gallium-V Compounds". Journal of the Electrochemical Society. The Electrochemical Society. 116 (12): 1725. Bibcode:1969JElS..116.1725M. doi:10.1149/1.2411685. ISSN   0013-4651.
  8. ↑ Reep, D. H.; Ghandhi, S.K. (1983). "Deposition of GaAs Epitaxial Layers by Organometallic CVD". Journal of the Electrochemical Society. The Electrochemical Society. 130 (3): 675. doi:10.1149/1.2119780. ISSN   0013-4651.
  9. ↑ Baliga, B. Jayant; Ghandhi, Sorab K. (1975). "Growth and Properties of Heteroepitaxial GaInAs Alloys on GaAs Substrates Using Trimethylgallium, Triethylindium, and Arsine". Journal of the Electrochemical Society. The Electrochemical Society. 122 (5): 683. Bibcode:1975JElS..122..683J. doi:10.1149/1.2134292. ISSN   0013-4651.
  10. ↑ Smith, L. M.; Wolford, D. J.; Venkatasubramanian, R.; Ghandhi, S. K. (8 October 1990). "Radiative recombination in surface‐free n+/n−/n+ GaAs homostructures". Applied Physics Letters. AIP Publishing. 57 (15): 1572–1574. Bibcode:1990ApPhL..57.1572S. doi:10.1063/1.103357. ISSN   0003-6951.
  11. ↑ Bhat, Rajaram; Ghandhi, S.K. (1978). "The Effect of Chloride Etching on GaAs Epitaxy Using TMG and AsH3". Journal of the Electrochemical Society. The Electrochemical Society. 125 (5): 771. Bibcode:1978JElS..125..771B. doi:10.1149/1.2131546. ISSN   0013-4651.
  12. ↑ Ghandhi, Sorab K.; Bhat, Ishwara B.; Fardi, Hamid (1988). "Organometallic epitaxy of HgCdTe on CdTeSe substrates with high compositional uniformity". Applied Physics Letters. AIP Publishing. 52 (5): 392–394. Bibcode:1988ApPhL..52..392G. doi:10.1063/1.99476. ISSN   0003-6951.
  13. ↑ Ghandhi, S. K.; Taskar, N. R.; Parat, K. K.; Terry, D.; Bhat, I. B. (24 October 1988). "Extrinsicp‐type doping of HgCdTe grown by organometallic epitaxy". Applied Physics Letters. AIP Publishing. 53 (17): 1641–1643. Bibcode:1988ApPhL..53.1641G. doi:10.1063/1.99936. ISSN   0003-6951.
  14. ↑ VLSI Fabrication Principles: Silicon and Gallium Arsenide, John Wiley and Sons. 1983. pp. 665.
  15. ↑ Completely Revised Edition, VLSI Fabrication Principles: Silicon and Gallium Arsenide, John Wiley and Sons. 1994. pp.834.
  16. ↑ "IEEE - Fellow Class of 1965". Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Archived from the original on 29 June 2011. Retrieved 25 January 2012.
  17. ↑ "IEEE Education Awards" . Retrieved 1 April 2012.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.