With the advent of the "Internet +" era, the modern informatization society has developed rapidly and is changing with each passing day. The basis of the informatized society is integrated circuit . In the past few decades, integrated circuits represented by CPUs and memory have been developing rapidly in accordance with Moore's Law. The basic unit of integrated circuits is the various semiconductor devices , such as transistors and MOS tubes, which laid the foundation for modern electronic technology. Many microelectronic experts have made outstanding contributions to the invention and application of semiconductor devices. Among these microelectronics experts and scholars, Chinese scientists play an important role. This article introduces the outstanding contributions made by three famous Chinese scientists in the field of microelectronic devices - Shimin , Sazhitang and Deng Qingyun in the invention and application of semiconductor devices and education.
Shimin
Shimin, born in Nanjing in 1936, is a ancestral home in WujiangZhenze. He is an expert in microelectronics science and technology and semiconductor device physics. He is an academician of the "Central Research Institute" in Taiwan, an academician of the US National Academy of Engineering, a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, a life fellow of the American Society of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), and an international fellow of the Japan Society of Applied Physics. Shi Min graduated from Taiwan University in 1957, received a master's degree from the University of Washington in 1960, received a doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1963, and worked at Bell Laboratory from 1963 to 1989. In 1967, he invented nonvolatile memory (NVSM) (NVSM) and made basic and forward-looking contributions to the field of electronic components. In 1990, he started teaching in the Department of Electronic Engineering of Taiwan Jiaotong University and served as director of the Center for Electronics and Information Research. From 1998 to 2004, he served as a professor of Lianhua Electronics at Taiwan Jiaotong University and director of Taiwan Nano Components Laboratory. After resigning, he served as a senior consultant.
Sensing has made pioneering contributions in technical fields such as metal semiconductor contacts, microwave devices, submicron MOSFET devices and microelectronic processes. In 1967, Shi Min and Korean-American Dawon Kahng used layers of sauce to inspire the two when eating dessert. They thought of adding a metal layer between the metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), and finally invented a non-volatile memory. In May of the same year, the two published the first paper on NVSM, "Floating Gate Non-Volatile Semiconductor Memory Cell Components", in the Bell System Technical Journal, which explained the principles and techniques of flash storage data for the first time, and then obtained a patent by Bell Laboratory.
NVSM was not taken seriously at the beginning. It was not until 1983 that Nintendo of Japan applied it to the game console, allowing gamers to record points at specific points during the game process, and did not need to recalculate the game characters after they died in battle, and they began to be widely paid attention. In 1989, the Nokia (Nokiah) mobile phone adopted this technology in order to save power with lightness and power. This technology was then used in the computer's BIOS (basic input output system), making the boot speed faster. After the 1990s, with the advent of the consumer electronics era, flash memory began to shine. The NVSM component invented by Shi Min is regarded as one of the three major inventions in the global semiconductor industry (the other two are transistors invented in 1947 and integrated circuits in 1959). NVSM has become one of the leading products driving the world's integrated circuit industry and is a key component of mobile phones, laptops, IC cards, digital cameras and portable electronic products.
In the 1970s, Sun Yunqi, then Minister of the "Ministry of Economy", invited Shi Min to be one of the "Ministry of Economy Development Plan Working Group". Shi Min proposed to promote the semiconductor industry, which ultimately led to the takeoff of Taiwan's economy, making it the first of the "Four Asian Tigers" in the 1920s and 1980s, and made important contributions to the development of Taiwan's economy.
Shimin is not only an internationally renowned expert in microelectronics science, technology and semiconductor devices, but also a leading educator in this field. Shi Min is world-renowned in microelectronics science and technology works, with as many as 12 books, more than 5 million words.Shimin has made great contributions to the development of semiconductor devices and talent cultivation. His representative work, Physics of Semiconductor Devices (published in 1969), is one of the three classic monographs in the fields of engineering and applied sciences, and is known as the "Bible" in the electronic technology industry. The book has been translated into 6 Chinese characters, with a circulation of 6 million copies, dominating the market and has been used for a long time by universities around the world as textbooks and reference books. By 2018, the book has been cited more than 47,500 times. Shi Min's works are also deeply influential in the domestic semiconductor research industry. , director of the Institute of Microelectronics at Peking University, Wang Yangyuan, believes that "few people who work in semiconductors do not know how to use Shi Min." His works were introduced to mainland China in the 1970s, which played a great guiding role in the scientific research and industry of semiconductors in mainland China. At that time, Shi Min's name was not familiar to mainland China and was once mistranslated as Shi Simeng.
Shi Min's works are all over the world, and it has cultivated a large number of pillars of the microelectronics field. Many well-known people in the industry are Shi Min's students. He has taught more than 10,000 students, and his laboratory is like the cradle of talent in Taiwan's semiconductor industry, becoming the foundation of Taiwan's semiconductor industry. Shi Min is an indispensable contribution to Taiwan's existing booming semiconductor industry and semiconductor talents who stand out in the world. Lu Chaoqun said, "Professor Shi's students have been eight generations", and each of them has achieved success. He is not only the light of Taiwan, but also the light of global semiconductor research and development and education.
Shi Min was invited to give lectures at famous universities such as Cambridge University , University of Tokyo, and University of Hong Kong. In the past 20 years, Shi Min has been invited to give lectures in mainland China many times and participated in China's microelectronics devices and IC industry seminars. He has repeatedly expressed his willingness to provide advice on the development of China's microelectronics industry.
At the beginning of 2000, his exchanges in mainland China started with Suzhou University . From October 14 to November 7, 2002, Shi Min came to Suzhou University at the invitation of the Suzhou Municipal Government, Suzhou University and Suzhou Wanghong Microelectronics Company to give a three-week lecture to students of the School of Electronic Information Technology, and attended the Suzhou Municipal Government's Summit Forum of the 2nd Electronic Information Expo (Chen Deming, the mayor of Suzhou City and the current Minister of Commerce, played an important role in bridges). As the specific arrangement of academic activities at that time, the author was fortunate to participate in Shi Min's related activities in Suzhou throughout the process.
hired such a heavyweight figure to Suzhou University for three weeks of lectures, which was highly praised by some famous domestic scientists who attended the Summit Forum of the Electronic Expo at that time. Vice President Zhang Xueguang delivered a speech at the opening ceremony: "It is also the first precedent in the century-old development history of Suzhou University, and it can be said to be the first of the century-old trends of Suzhou University." Shi Min brought the latest development trends of world microelectronics scientific research and industry, as if a spring breeze blows into the ancient and vibrant campus of Suzhou University, promoting the pace of teaching, scientific research and other construction of the school's microelectronics major.
Shi Min is a recognized leader in the world's microelectronics academy and industry. He has worked in Bell Labs for a long time. He is very willing to contribute to cultivating Chinese microelectronics professional talents and building his hometown. One of the achievements of Shi Min’s visit to Suzhou University was to hand over the Chinese version of the newly published second edition of Semiconductor Devices: Physics and Technology (Semiconductor Devices Physics and Technology) to , , and published by Suzhou University Press.
After 2002, Shi Min went to Suzhou University to guide his work many times, and the author has benefited a lot from his advice. Shi Min also returned to Wujiang for inspection many times and was warmly welcomed. In May 2019, he was invited to attend the 2019 World Semiconductor Conference in Nanjing and gave a keynote speech.
It is not easy for anyone to achieve something in one of the three aspects of "invention", "writing" or "talent cultivation", but Mr. Shi Min is a person who contributes to these three major contributions!
Shi Min received numerous awards for various scientific research, such as the International Association of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Electronic Devices Ebers Award in 1991. From 1986 to 1990, Shi Min served as editor-in-chief of "IEEE Electronics Device Letter", the highest-level journal in the field of microelectronics.In 2017, he and Gordon Moore (the father of Moore's Law and one of the founders of Intel) were awarded the title of IEEE Celebrated Member of the American Society of Electronics and Electrical Engineers. Currently, only 10 scientists around the world have won this honor, including Leo Esaki, the winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics, Herbert Kroemer, the winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics, and George E. Smith, the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics. Shi Min's inventions and achievements are highly praised by the world. He is one of the few Chinese scientists elected as foreign academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, an academician of the "Central Research Institute" in Taiwan, an academician of the Taiwan Institute of Technology, and an academician of the US National Academy of Engineering. He was awarded the Global "Flash Memory Summit" Lifetime Achievement Award. At present, Shi Min has been nominated for the "Nobel Prize in Physics" three times for the invention of NVSM. The nominee is Professor Ding Zhaozhong, (winning the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics).
Professor Shi Min is easy-going, approachable, and funny. While giving lectures at Suzhou University, he talked to me about his feelings about being nominated for the Nobel Prize and said that his wish is to live long and follow Kilby. Kilby won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of integrated circuits in 2000, and the supposedly award-winning Noyce (one of the founders of Intel) missed the death of lung cancer. Dawon Kahng, a Korean-American who invented NVSM with Shi Min, also died of lung cancer. Shi Min also emphasized that in addition to luck, hard work is necessary to obtain scientific research results.
Sazhitang
Sazhitang , born in Beijing in 1932, is an American physicist and microelectronicist, professor at the University of Florida, USA, academician of the National Academy of Engineering (1986), academician of the "Central Research Institute" in Taiwan, China (1998), and foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2000). In 1949, Sazhitang went to the United States to study at the University of Illinois. In 1953, he obtained his bachelor's degree and went to Stanford University to study. In 1956, he received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He later worked with William Bradford Shockley (inventor of transistors, Nobel Prize winner) in the industry for solid-state electronics. From 1959 to 1964, he worked for Fairchild Company. In 1964, he came to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to serve as a professor in the Department of Physics and Electronics and Computers, and has trained more than 40 doctorates in 26 years. Since 1988, he has taught at the University of Florida. In 2000, he was elected as a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2010, he served as a professor at the School of Physics and Mechanical Engineering, Xiamen University at .
Sazhitang has been committed to semiconductor devices and microelectronics research for a long time, and has made landmark contributions to the development of transistors, integrated circuits and reliability research. During his time at Fairchild Company, Sazhitang led a 64-person research team to study the manufacturing process of the first generation of silicon-based diodes, MOS transistors and integrated circuits, and was one of the pioneers of the semiconductor industry. In the late 1960s, Sazhitang first proposed the CMOS (complement metal oxide semiconductor device) structure together with Wanlass. He proposed the electron-hole composite theory in the p-n junction of semiconductors; developed the planar process of semiconductor local diffusion and MOS and CMOS field effect transistors, and proposed the MOS crystal management theory model; invented the deep energy level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) method to detect trace defects in semiconductors; discovered the passivation effect of hydrogen on acceptor impurities in silicon; and devoted to the reliability study of submicron MOS transistors. The invention of CMOS devices played a decisive leading role in the design and manufacturing of microelectronic devices and integrated circuits later, and had a huge impact. It can be said that current integrated circuit devices such as CPU and memory are all based on the technology of this device. The most important feature of this technology is that theoretically, the static power consumption of the device is 0. This is the most important evaluation index for modern electronic devices and integrated circuit design. At the same time, he also derived the famous Sarje equation.
Sazhitang was one of the first American scientists to conduct scientific and technological cooperation and exchanges with China after the reform and opening up. He has visited China many times, delivered more than 20 series of lectures, directed more than 10 Chinese graduate students, and assisted in holding international academic seminars in China many times.Sa Zhitang is an honorary professor at Peking University , Tsinghua University, and Xiamen University. He is an honorary doctorate at Hsinchu Jiaotong University in Taiwan (2004) and a national honorary doctorate at China (2010, nominated by Xiamen University). Sazhitang's "Fundamental of solid-state electronics" ("Basics of Solid-state Electronics") was translated into the Chinese version (2003). It is widely circulated as a textbook and reference book in the microelectronics major in mainland China, and has been well received, and has contributed to China's talent training.
Sazhitang has won numerous awards, and has won many awards including the highest award of the Semiconductor Industry Association of the United States (SIA). He is the world's top 1,000 most frequently cited scientists from 1965 to 1978. Sazhitang has been nominated for many times by the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Deng Qingyun
Deng Qingyun , born in Yuen Long, Hong Kong in 1947, is an American scientist. He is currently a professor at the Bank of East Asia, a Jockey Club Institute of Advanced Studies, and retired professor at the University of Rochester, USA. He is a Fellow of the American Physics Society and a Fellow of the American Information Society. In 2006, he was selected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences for his pioneering achievements in organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and heterojunction organic solar cells (OPVs). He is known as the "father of OLEDs". In 1967, Deng Qingyun left Hong Kong to study for a bachelor's degree at the University of British Columbia. In 1970, he obtained a bachelor's degree in chemistry with first-level honors and a doctorate in physics and chemistry from Cornell University in 1975. After graduation, he joined Kodak Research Laboratory and began his 31-year research career at Kodak. Deng Qingyun became a special researcher at Kodak Research Laboratory in 2003. After retiring from Kodak in 2006, he became a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Rochester in the United States. Deng Qingyun joined the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2013.
Deng Qingyun is an internationally renowned material physicist and chemist. He is famous all over the world for his research on organic optoelectronics, among which the invention of organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) is the most eye-catching. When he was a researcher at the Kodak Research Laboratory in the United States, he invented OLED and organic solar cells from 1986 to 1989, driving the development of organic optoelectronics.
OLED is a new type of flat panel display technology that has developed rapidly in recent decades with great prospects. Currently, full-color OLED display has been implemented, and small-sized OLED color displays have been used on mobile phone displays, digital cameras and tablets. OLED has obtained so many research and application due to its outstanding technical characteristics and huge application prospects, including: (1) a wide material selection range, using organic matter as a luminescent material, theoretically, it can realize any color display; (2) a low driving voltage, usually 3~10V DC voltage; (3) a high luminescence efficiency and luminous brightness; (4) solid-state active luminescence, wide viewing angle (170°); (5) a fast response rate (1 μs); (6) a relatively simple process and low cost; (7) ultra-thin and light weight; (8) a stable temperature performance and low temperature resistance (-40 ℃); (9) a device can be made on a flexible substrate, which can be bent and folded to achieve flexible display or lighting, and can also achieve large-area display and lighting. OLED is currently the main product to replace LCD. Since 2017, its market share has steadily increased.
Although people's research on electroluminescence (EL) can be traced back to the 1920s, the invention of OLED in the modern sense is attributed to Deng Qingyun. The academic community now agrees that Deng Qingyun's discovery and its subsequent research paths, such as the doping of organic luminescent dyes to change the luminescent color, have pointed out the direction for the later research on OLED and OPV. It can be said without hesitation that the current research frameworks of OLED and OPV are basically based on the research foundation laid by Deng Qingyun, and are the optimization of its structure and the adoption of new materials. The organic solar cells and OLED invented by Deng Qingyun have made outstanding contributions to the development of science and technology and produced huge socio-economic value, led the development direction of the industry, and created a global market of over 100 billion US dollars.
Deng Qingyun won many awards. In 2011, he won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (its importance is second only to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry). In 2014, Deng Qingyun won the Thomson Reuters Citation Award.Deng Qingyun was awarded the Outstanding Inventor Award from his former employer Eastman Kodak, and also won the Inventor of the Year Award from the Rochester Intellectual Property Law Society. He was listed as a Hall of Fame by the Consumer Electronics Association. On June 14, 2019, Deng Qingyun won the Kyoto Prize Advanced Technology Award, known as the "Japanese Nobel Prize", for his pioneering contributions to the birth and application of efficient OLEDs. In 2014, Deng Qingyun was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Deng Qingyun was hired as a professor at Suzhou University in 2011 and has communicated a lot since then. Deng Qingyun established the "Deng Qingyun International Joint Laboratory" at Soochow University in 2013 and was hired as an international consultant at Soochow University in 2015. As the head of the laboratory, Deng Qingyun has gathered a group of top scientists in relevant international fields for the joint laboratory and has obtained important research results in related fields. At the same time, Deng Qingyun often provides direct guidance to young teachers and graduate students at Suzhou University, providing extremely beneficial assistance to the industrialization of OLED in Suzhou City, and playing an important role in cultivating young scholars in the field of OLED research in Suzhou and promoting exchanges and cooperation between Suzhou and the leading international OLED research team. Deng Qingyun also recommended many internationally renowned OLED experts to come to Suzhou University for academic exchanges. In August 2019, he was hired as an honorary citizen of Suzhou.
During the process of dating with the author, Professor Deng also had a lot of experience in scientific inventions. He said that new scientific discoveries sometimes have some chances. He took himself as an example. Deng Qingyun, who had just graduated from a doctorate in 1975, joined Kodak Laboratory. His main work at that time was the research and development of organic solar cells, and he was not engaged in the research and development of OLEDs. One night in 1979, Deng Qingyun suddenly remembered something on the way home that he forgot to be in the laboratory, so he returned to the laboratory and found something bright in the dark. Tracing the origin, OLED was finally invented. This unexpected surprise kicked off the birth of OLED, and he was therefore called the "Father of OLED".
Today's information society, the rapid development of the integrated circuit industry is related to the development prospects of major economies around the world. Microelectronic devices represented by computers and mobile phone equipment chips are the focus of development in various countries and are also related to China's next development in the 21st century. In the process of the development of the IC industry, China has lagged behind the world's development level for a considerable period of time. After 40 years of development in reform and opening up, especially after 2000, China's technological development has made great progress, which is inseparable from some Chinese scientists who have made outstanding contributions to the field of microelectronics in the world, including the three outstanding representatives listed in this article. In fact, there are far more than these three Chinese microelectronics scientists who have won the Nobel Prize-level invention. There are also scientists such as Hu Zhengming, who won the National Science and Technology Award for the invention of FinFET (this invention allowed Moore's Law to be continued), Zhuo Yihe, who invented molecular beam epitaxy, and Zhang Ligang, who invented semiconductor quantum wells and superlattice. They not only provide consultations for the country, but some also directly participate in talent training. Their achievements not only show that Chinese people are capable and talented in developing the IC industry, but also stand at the forefront. (Editor Wang Zhimin)
Author profile: Qian Min, Department of Electronic Information Engineering, Wenzheng College of Soochow University, Department of Microelectronics, School of Electronic Information, Suzhou University, Associate Professor, Research Directions are Microelectronics, OLED/OPV and Integrated Circuits.
Fund project: Jiangsu Provincial Government Study Abroad Fund Project; Higher Education Reform Project of Wenzheng College of Suzhou University (17WZJG0017); Advantageous Discipline Construction Project of Jiangsu Colleges and Universities; Natural Science Foundation Project of Jiangsu Colleges and Universities (19KJD510006)
Note: This article was published in the 19th issue of "Science and Technology Guide" in 2019, please pay attention.
