The fields of microelectronics in general and nano/ microelectromechanical systems (N/MEMS) in particular have benefited from many intriguing and in some ways unique solid state and mechanical properties of silicon. Silicon, for many decades now, is the most popular semiconductor for earth and even planetary applications. However, the push to develop devices, sensors, and instruments that have extra high precision, consume low power, and not only survive but work exquisitely in harsh environments has triggered the engineers and scientists to explore other materials as replacements or augmented platforms for Silicon. In this talk, I will go over two specific material systems, gallium nitride, which is the most heavily used piezoelectric semiconductor, and Germanium Telluride, which is a phase change material. I will talk about their unique material properties, ones that are lacking in Silicon, and discuss electronic and optoelectronic devices that we have developed in such material systems benefiting from their unique properties.
Mina Rais-Zadeh received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees both in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2005 and 2008, respectively. From 2008 to 2009, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology. In 2009, she joined the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 2015. She joined NASA JPL in 2016 and remained as an adjunct professor of EECS, U. of Michigan.
Dr. Rais-Zadeh is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2011), IEEE Electron Device Society Early Career Award (2011), NASA Early Career Faculty Award (2012), the Crosby Research Award from the University of Michigan (2013), National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering (2013), ONR Young Investigator Award (2014), IEEE Sensors Council Early Career Technical Achievement Award (2015), University of Michigan EECS Outstanding Achievement Award (2016), and JPL Team Award (2018). Together with her students, she received the best poster award at the Transducers conference (2013), the best paper award at the IEEE SiRF conference (2014, 2016), honorable mention at the IEEE IMS (2014), and was the finalist in student paper competitions at the SiRF (2007) and IMS (2011) conferences. She is a senior member of IEEE, and a member of ASME, and a distinguished lecturer of IEEE EDS. She has served as a member of the technical program committee of IEEE IEDM (2011-2014), IEEE Sensors Conference (2011-2017), the Hilton Head workshop (2012, 2014, 2016), the IEEE MEMS Conference (2014-2015), Transducers (2015, 2017), and IFCS (2015-2018). She served on the 2015 IEEE MEMS Executive Committee and was an associate editor of IEEE Electron Device Letters (EDL). She is now an associate editor for the IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems (JMEMS) and on editorial board of Nature Scientific Reports. She is the Chair Person of the 2020 Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems Workshop (Hilton Head) Workshop. Her research interests include electron devices for wireless communication and sensing applications and the related device physics, resonant micromechanical devices, RF MEMS, gallium nitride MEMS, and sensory instrument development for harsh environments.
