Susanna Reggiani

Education: 1997 Electrical Engineering Degree from the University of Bologna. 2001 PhD Degree from the University of Bologna.

Employment: 2001 Research Assistant, 2011 Associate Professor at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Bologna.

Publications: Over 100 papers in various high-quality peer-reviewed journals and qualified international conferences.

Teaching: Currently in charge of two courses: "Solid-State Sensors" for the Master Degree  in Electronics Engineering and ""Electronics" for the Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering.

Membership: Member of the Scientific Committee of the "European Doctorate in Information Technology".

Project management: 

She is Scientific team leader of the European Project “Wide band gap Innovative SiC for Advanced Power (WINSIC4AP)”. 

She is Principal Investigator of two international research projects:

• “TCAD to Circuit-Level Modeling of Charge Spreading in HV products” with Texas Instruments inc., Dallas, Texas,

• “TCAD model calibration and simulation of Diamond-Like Carbon layers for high power semiconductor devices” with ABB Switzerland Ltd.

Scientific Activity

The scientific activity of Susanna Reggiani has been devoted to the physics, modeling and characterization of electron devices, with special emphasis on transport models in semiconductors. She contributed to the development of physical models in the frame of a deterministic solution of the Boltzmann transport equation based on the expansion of the distribution function in spherical harmonics leading to accurate descriptions of carrier mobility, impact-ionization and hot-electron injection into the gate oxide.

She has been working in the field of quantum computing since 1999, devising a new solid-state physical system based on a pair of coupled quantum wires to be used as a quantum bit ("qubit"). This system can be extended to realize a two-qubit quantum gate as well as any kind of single-qubit logical operations. By means of theoretical investigations and numerical simulations, the universality of the set of elementary quantum gates applied to the system was demonstrated, along with the feasibility of the physical system.

More recently, she contributed to the measurement of mobility and impact-ionization coefficients in silicon up to an unprecedented operating temperature of 700 K. In such an activity she worked to the definition of new physically-based analytical models suitable for device simulation tools. The developed models are currently available in the frame of commercial tools by Synopsys.

She is currently involved in 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.

Since 2007, she has been the Task Leader of Projects funded by the American Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) in collaboration with Texas Instruments (Dallas, Texas), dealing with the modeling, design and TCAD analysis of power MOSFETs. She worked on the modeling and characterization of hot-carrier stress degradation in LDMOS power devices featuring the shallow-trench isolation. A fast numerical degradation approach suited for commercial TCAD tools was proposed and extensively verified against experiments for the first time. The model has been recently implemented in the frame of the Synopsys SDevice TCAD tool. More recently, she has been involved in research activities concerning the package influences on high-voltage semiconductor FETs. The proposed study focuses on the role of the ionic and electronic charge transport within typical packaging layers on top of silicon chips. A model has been recently developed based on specific test-chip characterizations.

In 2013 she was involved in the European project “Energy-Efficient Converters using GaN Power Devices” (E2COGAN) and implemented new TCAD-based approaches for the numerical simulation of GaN-on-Si HEMTs up to the avalanche regime by accounting for the effects of the transition-layer stack. In 2013 she was also involved as staff researcher in the European Project “Technology CAD for III-V Semiconductor-based MOSFETs (III-V-MOS)" on the development of physically-based mobility models for InGaAs channels accounting for the role of interface traps and mechanical strain.

She is presently involved in the European Project “300mm Pilot Line for Smart Power and Power Discretes” (R3-POWERUP) as staff member on the development of TCAD approaches accounting for charge injection and hot-carrier-stress degradation. She is also involved in the European Project “Wide band gap Innovative SiC for Advanced Power (WINSIC4AP)” as Scientific team leader of the UniBo group on the activities concerning the development of physically-based models for TCAD simulation of SiC-based power devices.

She is Principal Investigator of two international research projects:

• “TCAD to Circuit-Level Modeling of Charge Spreading in HV products” with Texas Instruments inc., Dallas, Texas, on the stability of integrated power devices and circuits under high electric fields, high temperatures, different humidity conditions accounting for the losses in the packaging material on top;

• “TCAD model calibration and simulation of Diamond-Like Carbon layers for high power semiconductor devices” with ABB Switzerland Ltd, investigating the role of the silicon-DLC interface electronic structure, localized energy states in the DLC material, polarization effects and conductivity mechanisms within the DLC layer on the electrical parameters of a high-power diode.

She has published 200 papers in various high-quality peer-reviewed journals and qualified international conferences.

She participated as coordinator in the following projects: 

• SRC 2007-VJ-1667 "New Ultra-Low Rsp Power MOSFET Designs and Modeling", 36 months (2007-2010).Task Leader
• ENIAC 120003 "Modeling and Design of Reliable, process variation-aware Nanoelectronic devices, circuits and systems" MODERN, 36 months (2009-2012). Local Responsible
• SRC 2011-VJ-2161 "Physically-based HCS Degradation Model for TCAD Analysis of Power MOSFETs" 36 months (2011-2014). Principal Investigator
• SRC 2012-KJ-2257 "Modeling of Package Influences on High-Voltage Semiconductor FETs",  36 months (2012-2015). Principal Investigator
• Research Project - Joint Agreement con Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation “Numerical analysis of HCS degradation in next generation LNDMOS FETs” 12 months (2013). Principal Investigator

 She was involved in the following activities as staff researcher: 

• European Network of Excellence “Silicon-based nanostructures and nanodevices for long term nanoelectronics applications (NANOSIL)" (EU Contract n.216171) three years (2008-2011).
• European Project “Graphene-based Nanoelectronic Devices (GRAND)" (EU Contract n. 215752) three years (2008-2011).
• National Project (ex 40%) “Modellistica e simulazione di transistori in grafene per applicazioni logiche ad alte prestazioni e bassa dissipazione di potenza (GRANFET)" di durata biennale (2010-2012).
• European Network of Excellence “Beyond CMOS Nanodevices for Adding Functionalities to CMOS (NANOFUNCTION)" (EU Contract n. 257375) three years (2010-2013).
• Progetto europeo “Steep sub-threshold slope switches for energy efficient electronics (STEEPER)" (EU Contract n. 257267) three years (2010-2013).
• European Project “Technology CAD for III-V Semiconductor-based MOSFETs (III-V-MOS)" (EU Contract n. 619326 ) three years (2013-2016).
• ENIAC JU Grant Agreement n. 324280 " Energy Efficient Converters using GaN Power Devices (E2COGAN)”, 36 months (2013-2016).

Other Scientific Acknowledgments:

She is currently Editor of the IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society (impact factor 3.141).

She serves as reviewer of many international journals:

• IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices
• IEEE Electron Device Letters
• IEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability
• Electronics Letters
• Solid State Electronics
• Semiconductor Science and Technology
• Japanese Journal of Applied Physics
• Applied Physics Letters
• Journal of Computational Electronics
• Microelectronics Reliability
• IET Power Electronics
• International Journal of Numerical Modeling
• Energies

She has been part of the Technical Program Committee of the following conferences:

• IEEE International Workshop on Design and Test of Nano Devices, Circuits and Systems (NDCS)
• International Conference on Simulation of Semiconductor Processes and Devices (SISPAD)
• IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM)

She is currently part of the Technical Program Committee of the following conferences:

• European Solid-State Device Conference (ESSDERC)
• IEEE International Integrated Reliability Workshop (IIRW)
• IEEE European Symposium on Reliability of Electron Devices, Failure Physics and Analysis (ESREF)

Publication Report

 The analysis of documents is carried out in www.scopus.com.

• Total number of publications on refereed international journals and book chapters: 86

• Total number of publications on proceedings of international conferences: 114
• Total number of citations: 2126
• H-index: 24