Tomas Palacios, core member of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) has been awarded the DARPA Young Faculty Award for his project "On-Wafer Integration of Nitride and Silicon CMOS Electronics."
This project focuses on the seamless integration of GaN and Si transistors on the same wafer to take advantage of the very high critical electric field and electron velocity of GaN transistors and the capabilities of Si MOSFETs. This integration will result in very significant performance improvements in power electronics, analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters and other mixed-signal circuits.
The DARPA Young Faculty Award program consists of a three-stage competitive process and its goal is to identify the "rising stars in university microsystems research." It is sponsored by DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) to "provide MTO with revolutionary research ideas that are critical to future technology developments."
Tomas Palacios' group at MTL uses wide bandgap semiconductors to revolutionize the fields of power electronics, ultra high frequency amplifiers and biosensors. More information about his research can be found on his group's web site.
