IC Design and Fabrication Centre

The IC Design and Fabrication Centre is interdisciplinary in character with an emphasis on VLSI design, microelectronics and semiconductor devices. Its main objectives are:

Research and development in the field of semiconductor materials, devices and systems, integrated circuits and VLSI design.
Technical manpower development in this area.
Participation with the industry in the design and development of industry-related products.
Providing facilities for design, testing and characterization of semiconductor devices, materials and systems.
Interaction with other educational and scientific institutions for undertaking interdisciplinary activities for embedded systems and IoT.

About

IC Design and Fabrication facilities (Microelectronics) were established in the Departtment of Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering at Jadavpur University in 1986 through a project aimed at meeting manpower requirements in the area of LSI/VLSI. Since then a total grant of more than Rs. 2 crores over several Plan periods has been received from various funding authorities like MHRD, AICTE, UGC, MNES and DST by the Centre.

By utilizing these grants, an excellent infrastructure has been set up in the IC Centre (Microelectronics), unique of its kind in West Bengal and indeed in the Eastern Region. This is evidenced by the quantity and quality of research publications; the number of undergraduate and postgraduate students trained in this highly specialized area of national importance; and, above all, by the interest taken by industries in the work of the group. A number of faculty members from the Department of Electronics & Tele-communication Engineering are directly involved in setting up and operating these facilities. There is also a full-time Senior Scientific Officer, Two Technical Assistants, a Office Assistant and Research Fellows for carrying out activities in different projects.

Over the last thirty years, the Integrated Circuit electronics industry has been growing explosively following Moore’s law. The need for circuits more capable of performing the functions of growing complexity has led to the transition from SSI to VLSI circuits. The explosive growth of microelectronics has a number of consequences. One of them has been the emergence of a new engineering speciality, skilled in the design and fabrication of microelectronics components. As the microelectronics industry has matured, processing has emerged from the shadow of design and assumed a position as an independent and important area of study. As a result, microelectronic processing is increasingly finding a place in the academic curriculum.

The design and fabrication of an integrated circuit depend on material characteristics, processing parameters and VLSI design principles. All these are parts of advanced semiconductor technology. At the national level programme for the development of manpower in this thrust, the area is a priority.

Moreover, as more and more systems are integrated with increased functionality, the chip increasingly performs in the digital domain. A good VLSI designer should also have a good understanding of digital vary large scale integration (VLSI) and be competent at using the latest computer-aided design (CAD) tools: Know how to apply digital processing (DSP), analogue signal processing (ASP), and filtering concepts to the system-level design process as well as insight into system implication of component-level performance, is a prerequisite for the good VLSI design engineer.

As VLSI circuit density has been increasing continuously, undergoing a change from MOS to CMOS, successful CMOS integrated circuit design engineers should also have knowledge in the area of device physics & operation, circuit design, layout and process simulation. Students learning IC design should be trained at a fundamental level in these areas.

In IC Design & Fabrication Centre, a short-term training programme on Microelectronics Technology and VLSI Design is arranged keeping these basic objectives in mind.

Theoretical lectures
Familiarities with different CAD tools
Hands-on training on semiconductor processing leading to semiconductor
devices.

Participants should have some background knowledge in electronics and semiconductor devices and must be as best 2nd/ 3rd year/final students of engineering graduate / Bsc or Msc Student from Physics background/ Diploma students.

Eminent Engineers and scientists from different educational institutes and industries have been invited to deliver the lectures of the course.

IC Center is also having a Special manpower Development Programme (SMDP) Laboratory sponsored by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Govt of India, where Phase I, II and III have been successfully completed. SMDP lab is equipped with CADENCE, Synsposys, Mentor Graphics and FPGAs.

Very shortly IC centre will come up with its new facilities for Embedded systems and IoT training for cyber-physical systems.

Prof. Sayan Chatterjee, Coordinator

List of Faculty Members

Dr. Chandan Kumar Ghosh

Assistant Professor

School Of Material Science and Nanotechnology

Dr.

Dr. Chandrima Mondal

Assistant Professor

Department of Electronics & Telecommunication Engg

📞 : 2809

@ : chandrima.mondal@jadavpuruniversity.in

Prof.

Jaydeb Bhaumik

Professor

Department of Electronics & Telecommunication Engg

📞 : 03324572813

@ : jaydeb.bhaumik AT jadavpuruniversity.in

Prof.

Sayan Chatterjee

Professor

Department of Electronics & Telecommunication Engg

@ : sayan.chatterjee@jadavpuruniversity.in / sayan1234@gmail.com

Prof.

Sheli Sinha Chaudhuri

Professor

Department of Electronics & Telecommunication Engg

📞 : 03325472811

@ : sheli.sinha@jadavpuruniversity.in

Prof.

Sudipta Chattopadhyay

Professor

Department of Electronics & Telecommunication Engg

📞 : 03324572785

@ : sudiptachat@yahoo.com, sudipta.chattopadhyay@jadavpuruniversity.in

Research Areas

• Electronic Devices including Semiconductor Nanodevices : Modeling and Simumation. • Photonics Devices• Porous Silicon Formation by Alumina Template• Single electron & spintronics devices and their applications in VLSI circuits• Perovskite Solar Cells based on Titanium, Nickel and Cadmium doped BiFe03 active material • Organic and Inorganic Dyesensitized Solar Cells• VLSI Circuit Design and RF VLSI• VLSI interconnect delay optimization.• CMOS MEMS integration and signal conditioning of gas sensor.• Porous silicon low pressure sensors• Study of nanocrystalline silicon, Zine Oxide TiO2 and its application on Solar Cells and gas sensors • Design and simulation of RF MEMS based capacitive switch.• Nano-devices and Low power VLSI circuits• MEMS, NEMS, RF MEMS• Digital watermarking and data security• Security and Cryptography• RFID and its applications• Wireless communication• Digital signal processing• Gas Sensors• Mobile Ad-hoc networks (MANET)• Wireless sensor networks (WSN)• Organic Field effect transistor• VLSI Architectures and algorithms

Facilities Available

• Clean Room with clean bench.• De-Ionized water purifier (>=18M. Ohm)• Three-stack diffusion furnace • Photolithographic Facilities including mask aligner, vacuum spinner• Interference microscopes• Liquid Phase Epitaxial setup for Growth of Silicon• Thin Film Lab with vacuum coating units, EB-Gun units, RF Sputtering unit.• Four Probe Resistivity Measurement• MProve thin-film thickness measurement instruments• Mass Flow controller (1 No.) and Mass flow Meter (1 No.)• PID Temperature Controller (up to 12000C)• Spectrodip-Programable dip coater• Programmable tube furnace (up to 15000C)• C.R.O.• CC TV Camera• Function generator (2 Nos.)• Measurement system of different Gas Sensor• Central Air conditioner

Non-Teaching Staff

Name

Designation

No data was found

Achievements

• MEMS-based metal oxide gas sensors: Fabrication and testing of nanocrystalline Zinc oxide(ZnO) based methane sensor has achieved a new process of the high sensitivity of 97% and fast response of only 11 s at an operating temperature of 200°C. The aqueous chemical deposition process has been adopted to fabricate ZnO thin film. The design of the microheater has led to the optimized nickel alloy (DilverP1) microheater on the MEMS platform for gas sensors.• Design and Simulation of RF MEMS-based filters: Tunable band reject filter is a very critical component of electronic warfare. The design is of such a filter using MEMS technology presented on CPW transmission line on silicon substrate using Complementary Split Ring Resonators (CSRRs) and RF MEMS variable capacitor, enabling compatibility with planar IC technology. The CSRRs are etched on both the signal line and ground planes of the CPW. Tunability of the band reject filter is achieved by putting the MEMS bridge in either up or down state. Through electrostatic actuation of the RF-MEMS switched capacitor, the electrical characteristics of the filter is modified, so that its resonance frequency can be tuned. • MEMS-based pressure sensors: The sensor technology has undergone a giant forward leap by exploiting silicon as high precision, high strength, high-reliability mechanical material which can be easily micromachined to form various mechanical microstructures like diaphragms, cantilevers, nozzles and grooves. The development of such micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) lead to various commercial pressure sensors based on silicon and integrated with the electronics to form MEMS pressure sensors. However, the existing limitations of such sensors are low sensitivity, which makes them incompetent for many low-pressure applications including many biomedical ones. Various methods to improve the sensitivity of conventional silicon leads the way to increased nonlinearity along with the requirement of complex fabrication steps. The increasing urge towards improving the performance of pressure sensors, particularly for low pressure ranges without considerably increasing the cost and complexity of fabrication motivated the objective of the thesis towards the development of a high-performance piezoresistive pressure sensor in terms of improved sensitivity and low-temperature coefficient.• CMOS-MEMS integration and signal conditioning of gas sensors: A sensor is a device, which perceives and responds to a physical and chemical stimulus.Semiconductor sensors are semiconductor devices in which the semiconducting material is responsible for sensor operation. The semiconducting material can be utilized as sensor or as substrate for depositing other sensing material. Silicon based semiconductor sensor allows integration of sensor and signal processing circuit to develop an integrated sensor using standard IC fabrication process technology. Thus highly sensitive, low cost and very small sensor system on chip using silicon is possible• Design and optimization of Low power VLSI circuits: Recently, performance of any circuit has been synonymous with circuit speed or processing power. In nanometer technology power has become the most important issue because of increasing transistor counts, higher speed of operation and greater device leakage currents. Increased process parameter variability due to nonstop scaling has created problems in yield reliability and testing. The customer demand for handheld, battery operated devices such as cell phones, PDA, palmtop, laptop etc. has been increased day by day. The growth rate of these portable devices is going to be very high. As these devices are battery operated, battery life is of primary concern, but unfortunately, the battery technology has not kept with the energy requirement of the portable equipment. Commercial success of these products actually depends on size, weight, cost, computing power and battery life. Low power design methodology is very important with various power minimization techniques at the circuit, logic, architecture and algorithm levels to make them commercially viable. • Design and Simulation of Analog/Mixed signal circuits, data converters: Any electronic system that interfaces with the outside world needs analog circuits as part of it. This is because the real life signals like human voice are all analog in nature. Typical analog circuits that form part of these electronic systems are low-noise amplifiers, variable-gain amplifiers, filters, oscillators, mixers, etc. When both analog and digital circuits are to be provided in a system, an obvious approach is to integrate both of them together to reduce cost and improve performance, thus resulting in mixed-signal circuits. The design complexity of today’s analog and mixed signal circuits has increased tremendously due to high levels of on chip integration, new signal processing algorithms and rapid evolution of process technologies. The key to managing this increased design complexity within a short time period is to make use of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Verification tools.• Study of nano-crystalline silicon, Zinc oxide and titanium-di-oxide and their applications and gas sensors: The main focus of this project is to synthesize thin films of TiO2-SnO2 system in a wide composition range (~ 25-75% SnO2), specifically TiO20.75-SnO20.25, TiO20.50-SnO20.50 and TiO20.25-SnO20.75 and to study their structural and detail optical behavior in terms of transmittance, absorbance, refractive index, absorption coefficient, extinction coefficient and optical band gap.• Graphene synthesis and its application in gas sensor: Graphene is nothing but a single or few mono layers of graphite (sp2 hybridized carbon) with a set of versatile mechanical, chemical and electronic properties. The synthesis of graphene is simple and it is primarily produced by catalytic decomposition of hydrocarbons on a substrate of one’s choice using the well known CVD technique. Here we are using the methane (CH4) gas as a precursor for the carbon source. We are also using Raman Spectroscopy, SEM, and AFM etc to study the graphene surface and its morphology. Due to its perfectly two dimensional atomic structures with high surface to volume ratio, highest room temperature thermal conductivity (~5000W/mK), Ultra fast electron transport (highest mobility ~200000 cm2/Vs), it can be used in sensor application. Due to the flammable and explosive nature of hydrogen (H2) gas and its widely uses in chemical industries, the detection of the leakage of hydrogen gas is very essential for its safety use and we are using this CVD grown graphene layer as a chemical gas sensor to detect the H2 gas.• Studies on stability and electrical contacts on porous silicon for sensor devices: In this investigation, room temperature growth of nanocrystalline porous silicon thin film could be successfully achieved by using electrochemical anodization of p type crystalline Si having resistivity 2-5 Ω cm and (100) orientation using HF and ethanol as the electrolyte. The accurate control of the electrolyte concentration, the applied current density and the time of anodization could be utilized to monitor the thickness and the porosity of the thin film. Although porous silicon is a versatile material and well compatible with silicon IC technology the material is suffering from the stability problem. The high density of surface states arising from its nanostructure is responsible for the uncontrolled oxidation of the surface. Hence it disturbs the stability of the material and also creates difficulties for the formation of stable electrical contact that is again a very important issue for the commercial application of porous silicon. Therefore, passivation of the surface states is necessary to stabilize the material. PS surface was modified using a very dilute solution of noble metal chlorides (PdCl2, RuCl3, and K2PtCl6) by a low cost electro less chemical method and for a very short duration of time. During metal dispersion PS surface gets oxidized simultaneously. This thin oxide layer protect the PS surface from further degradation by passivating the surface states and stabilize the material. Additionally the dispersed metal islands increase the conductivity of the surface. The material was characterized by AFM, FESEM, EDAX, GIXRD, SIMS, and XPS for morphology and composition. Incorporation of Pd on the PS surface was more prominent than the other two metals (Ru and Pt). The electrical property of the samples was studied by I-V characterizations. Pd modified samples showed best consistency in stability compared to the other modified samples. Specific contact resistance of Al contact to Pd modified PS was measured by the transmission line model (TLM) method. The Metal-Insulator-Semiconductor (MIS) sensors were fabricated using both unmodified and surface modified porous silicon. Pd-Ag (26%) was chosen as the top noble metal electrode to fabricate the Pd-Ag/PS/Si/Al structure. The junctions were characterized by I-V studies and were confirmed to behave as Schottky devices and they were subsequently studied for hydrogen sensing at room temperature. The modified sensors showed some improvements over the unmodified samples but the superior performance was observed for Pd modified sensors showing 84% response to 1% hydrogen in nitrogen as carrier gas and 8 sec and 207 sec response and recovery time respectively. The porosity of the PS for Pd modified samples was varied from 40% to 65% to study the effect of porosity on gas sensor performance. Unmodified porous silicon sensors of different porosity were also characterized for comparison. Pd modified sensors showed improved and stable performance for different porosity over the unmodified ones. For unmodified sensors gas response initially increases with porosity and finally saturates. But Pd modified sensors showed improvement with increasing porosity up to 55% and then deteriorates. The structural characteristics of the modified sensors by EDAX line scan analysis revealed that the incorporation of metal island increases with the increasing porosity. Thus beyond an optimum loading the metallic conductivity of the surface dominates and thus the gas response decreases. However, all the modified sensors showed stable performance at room temperature (270C) but beyond that an unusual fluctuation occurred probably due to the damage in the PS structure at the metal/PS interface. To obtain the stability of the sensors operating at higher than room temperature the PS surface was coated with a thin ZnO layer deposited by sol gel dip coating method. Here ZnO is working as a protecting layer for PS, providing high temperature stability because of the greater bonding strength between PS and ZnO. The sensor could be operated even at 1500C for long-term operation. To improve the gas response behaviour and the stability of the sensor, both the PS and the ZnO surfaces were modified with Pd. However, the response time (28 sec) and recovery time (292 sec) of this composite structure is a little bit longer than the Pd modified PS sensor probably due to the incorporation of an additional thin ZnO layer on it.• Improved hydrogen sensing characteristics of ZnO/p-Si heterojunction by functionalization of sol-gel grown nano ZnO film: Nanocrystalline n-ZnO thin film was deposited on p-type silicon substrate (2-5 Ω cm resistivity and (100) orientation) by a simple and low cost sol-gel dip coating method. The surface of the deposited ZnO layer was chemically treated by PdCl2 solution. Two types of sensor structures (Pd-Ag/ZnO/p-Si/Al and Pd-Ag/Pd:ZnO/p-Si/Al) were fabricated and tested for hydrogen. The hydrogen response of the Pd treated ZnO surface was significantly enhanced (64% response and 83 sec response time) compared to the untreated ZnO surface (38% response and 156 sec response time). The long-term stability of the heterostructures was also improved after Pd treatment. Pd dispersion on ZnO surface reduces to a large extent the surface states associated with the polycrystalline ZnO thin film and enhances hydrogen chemisorptions by lowering the adsorption activation energy. The barrier height modulation at ZnO/p-Si junction via strong dipole formation at the Pd-Ag/ZnO interface on exposure to hydrogen improves the sensing characteristics.• A comparative study on sensing performance of ZnO/p-Si and TiO2/p-Si hetero junctions for VOC detection: Nanocrystalline n-ZnO and p-TiO2 thin films were deposited on crystalline Si substrate. by the simple and low cost sol-gel method. The surfaces of nano crystalline ZnO and TiO2 were modified by PdCl2 solution to passivate the defect states and to improve the gas sensitivity. Both unmodified and Pd modified sensors with Pd-Ag/n-ZnO/p-Si/Al and Pd-Ag/p-TiO2/p-Si/Al device structures were exposed to different hydrogen, ethanol, methanol and acetone concentrations at the optimum biasing voltage and temperature. The effect of gas response was investigated using nitrogen as well as synthetic air as the carrier gas. Both the sensor configurations showed the improved gas response after surface treatment with Pd. ions. Surface modified p-TiO2 sensors recorded higher gas response, response time and recovery time compared to ZnO sensors under the similar conditions. For practical applications, similar set of sensor experiments was also performed in air ambient. The response magnitude and recovery time were reduced compared to those in nitrogen but the response time remained almost unchanged. However, there was spectacular reduction in the recovery time, possibly due to quick removal of residual hydrogen from the surface of the sensor by interaction with oxygen present in air. The sensors showed good stability and no degradation after working for 24 hours and 12 hours in a discrete mode (6 hours per day) for nitrogen and air respectively. A possible gas sensing mechanism was suggested with a qualitative energy band diagram.• Design of Frequency Synthesizer, Mixer and LNA at 2.45 GHz for Seismic Application: With the main goals of low cost, low power and small size wireless receiver at 2.4 GHz, receiver architecture based on CMOS technology is the most admired architectures since power dissipation can be minimized and easily implemented as a single-chip. Recently, the concept of a standardized low data rate wireless personal area networking IEEE 802.15.4 ZigBee, in the frequency band of 868/915 MHz and 2.4 GHz, has been emerged with vast applications in Industry, Home Automation, PC peripherals, Remote control Personal Heath Care and Education. In recent communication system design, having the primary criteria of low power and miniaturized circuit, the system and subsystem design, co-simulation is necessary for observing the behavior of RF signal in and out through different design layers. With equivalence between Maxwell’s equation and its circuit transformation, it is easier to understand the physical behavior of RF circuit using circuit theory. But the analysis needs to be studied in view of signal integrity and losses at higher frequency, where the behavior of circuit components is distributed. Accordingly the circuit design emphasizes the performance of matching, stability, linearity and dynamic range. A Seismic sensor based data logger can be classified by

Wirelinetransceiver: Where seismic sensor based generated data can be reached to the receiver and finally to computing station through cable network. The drawback of this kind of architecture is (a) Reduced mobility of the system and (b) Range of applicability.
Wireless transceiver: Avoids the drawback of wireline infrastructure, thus the system achieves easy of mobility, increase the range of application without loss of accuracy.

Complete wireless based seismic sensors network includes

Modulator based transmitter, which essentially involves i) precision clock (or timing) sources such as PLL ii) Modulator, iii) Power amplifier and matched network
Demodulator based receiverinvolving Matched Network-LNA-Mixer, ii) Precision clock sources (PLL),

Analog Front end Amplifier and Digital interface with DSP based data processing system. Full Chip Complete PLL: Full chip PLL GDS file submitted for fabrication to IMEC, along with IIT Kharagpur. A PLL based frequency synthesizer the following unit has been designed using TSMC 180nm CMOS technology.

Phase frequency detector
Loop filter
Charge Pump
Voltage control oscillator (2.45 GHz)
Frequency divider ( N=120 divider)
PLL based Frequency Synthesizer has been characterized and simulated in Cadence Spectre.

The post layout simulation has been done using the TSMC 180 nm technology and using a supply of 1.8 V.• Optical Reflectance Texturization of Multicrystalline Silicon Wafer for Solar Cells: Cost-effective solar cell can be fabricated with the use of multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) wafer. Accordingly, texturization of an mc-Si surface is an important step for fabrication of anmc-Si solar cell as it reduces reflection of light from the surface of the cell. In this study, wet isotropic etchant composition of HF-HNO3 -H2SO4-H2O has been considered to texture the mc-Si wafer as a cost-effective and reliable process at room temperature with a faster convergence rate. Concentration variation of H2SO4 in the wet acid etchant on both mc-Si etching thickness and etching rates has been studied. Subsequently, the surface morphology has been investigated with the use of field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) photograph, which exhibits the nanoporous structures on the surface of the mc-Si wafer. Further, the reflectance from the etched surface of mc-Si also has been measured for the wavelength ranges from 200 to 1200 nm and has been found to be from 3% to 6% to etch with the said acid composition.

NBA Accreditation:UG-CSE,ETCE (6yrs) & UG-IT,IEE,PE (3yrs)