PhD School Program

Reliability in Electronics

As a consolidated tradition, the International School for Ph.D. students will be held before the SIE 2018 Meeting from June 18 to 20, in the beautiful and suggestive scenario of the ancient courtyard (chiostro) with portico of the Department of Political Sciences of University Federico II, located in Largo San Marcellino, in the heart of the historical center of Naples.

This year, the Ph.D. school will be held in memory of Professor Niccolò Rinaldi (1964-2018).

Ph.D. students who (carefully) attend the School will get 4 credits. Each lesson is associated to a test as an evaluation process for the acquisition of credits. Each student will receive a certificate of individual attendance.

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This year the School will be focused on the broad topic of reliability problems in electronic devices, circuits, and systems, as well as on related subjects. Reliability is commonly recognized to be a critical issue in electronics due to harsh operating conditions and also (paradoxically) to technology advancements, which entail e.g., high electric fields and high temperatures; as a consequence, this topic is relentlessly drawing attention in both academy and industry.

Anyway, the aim of the School is not only to explain the reliability basics in all the fields of electronics (power transistors/systems, optoelectronic devices, digital circuits, photovoltaic plants …), but also to detail the monitoring, simulation, measurement strategies available in the recent literature, and to offer some design guidelines to alleviate the potential reliability reduction. Given the crosscutting relevance of the topic, we believe that the School can be of great interest also for Ph.D. students that are not dealing strictly with electronics, like students in biomedical, electrical, industrial, and telecommunication engineering.

By attending the School, all the students will have the unique opportunity of enjoying the talks of a team of international speakers of paramount importance in the field. The list of speakers (with topics) is reported below:

Dr. Gerhard G. Fischer (IHP, Frankfurt Oder) and Prof. Christoph Jungemann (University of Aachen) will talk about the degradation due to hot carriers in electronic devices; more specifically, Dr. Fischer will cover measurement techniques, modeling in circuit simulation tools, and physical interpretation of the damage induced by hot carriers in SiGe HBTs for high-frequency amplifiers. Prof. Jungemann will discuss advanced non-classical simulation strategies relying on the BTE for the description and understanding of hot-carrier degradation in SiGe HBTs and power VDMOSTs.

Prof. Lorenzo Codecasa (Politecnico di Milano) will present the advances of his model-order reduction approaches for the very fast, yet accurate, simulation of detrimental electrothermal effects in a large variety of electronic devices and systems.

Prof. Giovanni Spagnuolo (University of Salerno) will describe reliability issues in photovoltaic panel and plants, with focus on those dictated by aging, environmental factors, and partial shadowing.

Dr. Giovanna Mura (University of Cagliari) will explain the importance of the Failure Analysis in the assessment of the reliability degradation in electronics, with special emphasis on optoelectronic devices.

A session is then dedicated to reliability issues plaguing power electronics. Prof. Alberto Castellazzi (University of Nottingham) first will provide an overview of degradation and failure of power modules operating in harsh environments, and then will elucidate key aspects of the real-time health monitoring and diagnostics of power modules in railway inverter systems.

Afterward, a light will be shed on critical points concerning the reliability in digital electronics: Prof. Felice Crupi (University of Calabria) will illustrate the phases of the reliability testing procedure in CMOS nanodevices, Prof. Cecilia Metra (University of Bologna) will review and clarify the reliability challenges in VLSI circuits and systems, and Prof. Luca Larcher (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) will share his expertise on the advanced simulation of reliability degradation in logic and memory devices.

A foreground topic focused on the uncertainty quantification for robust design of electronic systems will be explored by Prof. Francesco Ferranti (Institut Mines-Télécom (IMT) Atlantique, Brest, France).

Lastly, Prof. Gaudenzio Meneghesso (University of Padova) will show the main results of his extensive research activity on the reliability of power GaN devices.

Download the PhD School Program (last update: May 9, 2018)