Yong Gan
California State Polytechnic University-Pomona, CA·Engineering
Computer chips and power electronics heat up and cool down every time they run. Semiconductors and metals expand by different amounts when heated.
- Fields
Engineering
Materials Science
- Topics
thermomechanical fatigue
semiconductor reliability
semiconductor/metal interface
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2028
What they work on
- Develop an energy dissipation criterion, a measure of energy lost as damage grows, to evaluate thermomechanical fatigue in semiconductor/metal interfaces under cyclic thermal and mechanical loading.
- Measure changes in interface impedance to track layer separation and fatigue crack growth rates in semiconductor/metal joints during fatigue testing.
- Use numerical simulations, validated by fatigue tests and microstructure analysis, to identify features such as crystal lattice discontinuities that cause cracks to start.
- Establish the specific energy of interfacial debonding as a unified fatigue parameter across silicon, silicon carbide, gallium oxide, zirconium-doped hafnium oxide and gallium nitride.
More about the research
As a result, the joints where these materials meet are stressed again and again until they crack and come apart. This kind of wear, called thermomechanical fatigue, is a key reason semiconductor devices fail.
Why it matters
Failing joints limit how long semiconductor devices last in supercomputers, cars and deep-space missions. A unified way to measure fatigue damage at semiconductor/metal interfaces could guide chip makers in the design, fabrication and packaging of more durable and reliable devices. These include ones built from newer materials such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
William Musinski
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, WI·Materials Science·Early-career
Measure strains inside grains, dislocation substructures and grain boundary interactions before and during fatigue cracking, using synchrotron high-energy X-ray diffraction, which sees inside metals as they deform, together with high-resolution microscopy.
Yuping Zeng
University of Delaware, DE·Engineering·Early-career
Find the material, surface and interface causes that make GaN-on-Si high electron mobility transistors perform worse than GaN-on-SiC devices, by linking fabrication process steps to measured device performance.
Ariful Haque
Texas State University, TX·Materials Science
Grow uniform, delamination-free diamond films on gallium oxide (Ga2O3) by first forming an ultrathin quenched carbon (Q-carbon) interlayer through pulsed laser annealing.
The school
California State Polytechnic University-Pomona: 2 labs on PI Pages, $14M a year on research, 18 research doctorates a year.
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