Elena Gnani

Her scientific activity has been devoted to the physics and modeling and the characterization of beyond-CMOS devices and non volatile memories. In particular, she contributed to the development of physical models for carrier transport in semiconductors and to the study of new numerical-analysis techniques, with special emphasis on the study of quantum-confined devices, such as silicon nanowires (NW), carbon nanotubes (CNT) and graphene nanoribbons (GNR), which represent possible candidates for future generations of the nanoelectronic technology.
She has developed new simulation tools for the analysis of quantum mechanical effects not just for quantization effects due to the electron structural, or field-related, lateral confinement , but also for quantum transport effects which must be taken into account for devices with gate lengths of few nanometers, namely band-to-band tunnelling and quasi-ballistic transport, which are commonly neglected by the semi-classical approximation. Moreover, EG devised a new physical model for the investigation of the electronic properties variation related to non-parabolicity effects of the energy dispersion relationship E(k), which take place for nanowire devices with a cross section of few nanometers.  

She is currently the principal investigator in the research projects “Futuro in Ricerca” (FIRB) Novel device and circuit concepts for energy-efficient electronics funded by the Italian Ministry of University. The objective of this project is to study device architectures able to outperform the ITRS predictions in terms of off- and on-current, with the aim of reducing the voltage operation of advanced nanoelectronic circuits into sub-0.5V and their stand-by power consumption by one order of magnitude.