ECE Ph.D. student Nujhat Tasneem has won the Ed Nicollian Award for best student paper at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Semiconductor Interface Specialist Conference (SISC). The event was held in early December 2021 with awards being announced in March 2022.

Tasneem’s presentation, “Charge Trapping Effects on Memory Window in Ferroelectric Field Effect Transistors,” was the highest rated presentation based on the feedback of SISC committee members and invited speakers. She is the first Georgia Tech student to receive the award.

The award-winning paper introduced a novel electrical characterization method to track carrier capture and emission dynamics during write operations in n-type ferroelectric-field-effect transistors (FEFETs). FEFETs are a candidate for high-density, non-volatile, embedded memory applications due to their promise of having low operating voltages and write energies combined with low-leakage, and high-density integration. While significant work has been done to explain the operation and endurance of FEFETs, this research details a superior method of measurement because it provides an understanding of the transport and the status of the ferroelectric.

“This novel characterization method sheds a light on the underlying device physics of FEFETs, which is necessary to optimize its design, especially as a non-volatile memory (NVM) element” said Tasneem.

Tasneem is currently part of the The Khan Lab headed by ECE Assistant Professor Asif Khan. The work presented was supported by the ASCENT project (Applications and Systems-driven Center for Energy-Efficient integrated Nano Technologies), one of six centers supported by SRC’s Joint University Microelectronics Program (JUMP). Fabrication at Tech was done at the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN), supported by the National Science Foundation- National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NSF-NNCI) program.

The SISC Ed Nicollian Award for best student paper was established in 1995 in honor of Professor E.H. Nicollian, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Nicollian was a pioneer in the exploration of the metal-oxide-semiconductor system, particularly in the area of electrical measurements. His efforts were fundamental to establishing the SISC in its early years.