Friday, October 30 • 2:30 PM – UTEB, Rm. 175
The Science and Engineering of Developing Reliable Electronic Systems
Prof. Abhijit Dasgupta Jeong H. Kim
Professor of Mechanical Engineering Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE)
University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
Abstract: This presentation will focus on some of the interesting lessons learned at the CALCE Center over the past 30 years in the science and technology of material aging mechanisms and system degradation modes in complex electronic systems. Modern engineering systems are becoming extremely electronics-rich where the electronics are intrinsically multi-functional systems with highly multi-physics aging and degradation mechanisms under complex life-cycle environmental and operational stress combinations. At the same time, ever-increasing demands for miniaturization have extended the degradation physics into the nano-to-micro length scales, requiring rigorous multi-scale approaches. A few interesting examples of such multi-physics multi-scale degradation mechanisms include creep-fatigue in high-temperature interconnect metal alloys, ‘cold-welding’ in gold-gold interconnects by solid-state diffusion, leakage currents due to the electro-chemistry of dendritic growth in metallization, and dielectric breakdown due to quantum tunneling effects. This pressure for miniaturization, combined with the need for increased functionality and increased affordability, have placed tremendous pressure on the science and technology of achieving and assuring reliability in complex electronic systems. Conducting this type of application-driven fundamental and applied research in a university setting, within the context of graduate thesis and dissertation research, poses unique challenges and imparts special training and skills to the student researchers, to equip them for a very diverse employment landscape. An overview and a few selected examples will be provided during this presentation, with particular emphasis on important lessons that graduate students can take away on how to prepare for the modern-day multi-disciplinary work-place and research environment.
Biographical Sketch: Dr. Abhijit Dasgupta, Jeong H. Kim Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has been teaching at University of Maryland since he obtained his Ph.D. in Theoretical & Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 1988. His expertise is in the multi-physics, multi-scale constitutive behavior and damage mechanics of engineered materials, for applications in reliability assessment, for real-time health monitoring, and for accelerated stress testing of electronic/photonic systems, ‘smart’ structures, MEMS, and nanoscale structures. This research is funded by an international consortium of leading electronics manufacturers as well as by government funding agencies as NSF, ARL and ARO. He is an ASME Fellow and the current Chair of the Electronic and Photonics Packaging Division of ASME.
For additional information, please contact Prof. Xinyu Zhao at (860) 486-0241, xinyuz@engr.uconn.edu or Laurie Hockla at (860) 486-2189, hockla@engr.uconn.edu