College of Engineering - Swansea University

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College of Engineering ]
Electronics Systems
Design Centre (ESDC)
The ESDC’s current research is supported by
grants totalling more than £4 million from the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
Council (EPSRC), Royal Society, Higher
Education Funding Council for Wales
(HEFCW), European Regional Development
Fund (ERDF), and for specific projects by EU
Consortium grants, under FRAMEWORK and
other initiatives.
The Centre’s industry sponsors have
included BT, Siemens, Plessey, GE Lighting,
Schlumberger, COGSYS, SILICONIX,
Morganite, Newbridge Networks, Alstom,
City Technology, BNR Europe, Philips,
SWALEC, DERA, BTG, Toyota and Hitachi.
The Centre’s design and modelling
laboratory is equipped with industrial
standard SILVACO TCAD, CADENCE design
tool, PSPICE, MATLAB and COMSOL.
A device characterisation laboratory consists
of oscilloscopes, function generators, power
analysers, micro-processor development
systems, spectrum analysers, high voltage
test equipment and thermal device
characterisation equipment.
Additionally, the Centre enjoys separate
laboratories for postgraduate projects and
biometrics research and a PhD office, as
well as eight computer cluster nodes with
two six-core Xeon processors (96 CPUs) and
two-three GB memory per core, as part of
the Civil and Computational Engineering
Centre (C2EC) Supercomputing Cluster.
Electronics research has been rejuvenated
within the College of Engineering thanks to a
number of academic appointments including
Dr Karol Kalna, Dr Antonio Martinez and
Dr Lijie Li.
These key appointments have helped to gain
the critical mass of expertise needed to
attract research investment from UK research
councils, industry and the Welsh Government
– as well as to achieve national and
international recognition for research
excellence.
Researchers from the Centre, under the
direction of Dr Petar Igic, actively
collaborate across the College of
Engineering and the University.
Dr Paul Holland has been working on a
groundbreaking Engineering and Physical
Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded
project entitled ‘Multi-Technique Bio-
Analytical Investigation at the Single/
Sub-Cellular Level Using a New
Lab-On-A-Chip Technology Platform’,
together with Dr Cathy Thornton from the
College of Medicine’s Institute of Life
Science. This work forms part of the Centre’s
silicon health (SiHealth) initiative, looking into
applying well-established as well as novel
silicon technologies to develop sensors,
devices and systems for medical
applications.
ESDC researchers also collaborate
across other leading universities in the UK,
including Southampton, Cambridge,
Glasgow, Bristol, Sheffield University,
and University College London.
Dr Kalna has been working in partnership
with IBM on the ‘Multiscale Modelling of
Metal-Semiconductor Contacts for the Next
Generation of Nanoscale Transistors’ project,
which was awarded a grant of almost
£290,000 by the EPSRC. He is also a
co-investigator on the EPSRC-funded project
‘Atomic Scale Simulation of Nanoelectronic
Devices’ project, led by Professor Asen
Asenov from Glasgow University, which was
awarded a grant of almost £1,190,000.
Dr Martinez is leading another EPSRCfunded
research project, with a grant of
more than £640,000, entitled ‘Quantum
Simulations of Future Solid State Transistors’,
working in partnership with the University
College London, University of Southampton,
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
An area of rapid research growth within the
group is applied power electronics in
embedded energy generation. While it has
sustained interests in micro/nano electronics
devices and technology, the Centre is best
known for its ground-breaking research into
Power IC technology. This technology
combines power devices with low voltage
control IC technology and is vital for energy
efficient electronics.
Collaboration with two of the largest
multinational semiconductor companies –
Diodes ZETEX and X-FAB – led to a
£1 million ‘Power System on Chip Development
– TONIC (100V Integrated Circuit)’ Technology
Strategy Board (TSB) grant.
The industrial part of the TSB-funded research
was led by Professor Glenn Birchby, Chief
Scientist at Diodes ZETEX, and Dr Brendan Bold, Process
Development Director, X-FAB Semiconductor Foundries.
ESDC is a world leader in semiconductor device modelling, finite
element method (FEM), and compact modelling, the Centre also
specialises in quantum transport and ensemble Monte Carlo
simulations of nanoscale transistors.
Other research areas include microelectromechanical systems
(MEMS) and Energy Harvesting, PV Technology and Systems,
Systems, Control and Software Engineering, Computational
Electromagnetics, Speech and Image Processing.
MEMS activities, lead by Dr Li, are currently supported by an
EPSRC grant of almost £101,000 for the ‘Smart
Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) Actuators’ project,
looking into developing so called ‘smart’ microactuators that
integrate conventional microactuators with driving electronics
to address the limitations of present microactuators.
ESDC researchers also support all the research groups within
the Low Carbon Research Institute (LCRI), a pan-Wales university
initiative, wherever particular electrical or electronic systems are
required to achieve world-class performance.
These activities have been supported with grant of £1 million
from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales
(HEFCW) and £1.3 million from the European Regional
Development Fund (ERDF).
ESDC researchers are also contributing to the LCRI’s Solar
Photovoltaic Academic Research Consortium (SPARC), developing
new types of PV panels that will radically reduce the energy
used in production. The list of industrial partners includes
Pilkingtons, Sharp, Egnitec and Tata.
www.swansea.ac.uk/esdc/
“Swansea University has an international reputation
for their work in power electronics, power
semiconductor devices and the design and modelling
of power integrated circuit process technologies. The
[TONIC] project was a resounding success delivering
an upgraded process technology to the agreed
specification, the agreed timeframe and cost, and
proven by technology demonstrators.
Although the success was facilitated by the highly
effective exploitation of shared knowledge by
existing collaborators, it hinged on the technical
expertise of the researchers from Swansea working
with the process engineers at X-FAB, and the project
organisation and management skills of the Swansea
R.A. that led the program. X-FAB have capitalised on
the work done by improving the performance of the
device elements and applying the new learning to
other process offerings.
This is a good example of knowledge and
technology transfer from academia to industry. An
existing technology was taken and significantly
enhanced through joint development activities. This
resulted in a shortened development time that
enabled near-term exploitation by X-FAB in contrast
to a clean-sheet start and much longer time.
”
Professor Glenn Birchby,
Chief Scientist at Diodes ZETEX
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