As a part of the "Dr. Anwarul Abedin Lecture Series", a regular development initiative of the American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB), the Faculty of Engineering (FE) at AIUB organized a webinar titled "Breaking the Mold: Using SiGe Technology in Ways That Were Never Envisioned" on Wednesday, August 04, 2021 in Dhaka from 07:00 PM to 08:30 PM.  

Dr. ABM Siddique Hossain (Professor and Dean, Faculty of Engineering, AIUB) inaugurated the webinar with a welcome speech. He began by paying tribute to AIUB's Founder-Chairman, Dr. Anwarul Abedin, who made significant contributions to the university's development. He then gave a brief overview of semiconductor technology's history and immense potential in the modern era.

The esteemed guest speaker of this webinar was prominent researcher Dr. John D. Cressler (Schlumberger Chair Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech., USA). During the webinar, Prof. Cressler shared his valuable teaching and research experience of 30 years in academia. As part of his self-introduction, he presented his team's research involving state-of-the-art Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) technology advancements. The motivation behind the development of Silicon-Germanium Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor (SiGe HBT), the first practical bandgap-engineered device to be successfully implemented in Silicon, was the improvement of transistor performance while maintaining the maturity, yield, reliability, and availability of Si. After discussing the history of defect-free growth of strained SiGe on Si and generation of a bandgap offset, he first explained the creation of SiGe HBT by introducing graded Ge Layer into the base of a Si BJT. Next, he recognized SiGe BiCMOS technology as an ideal fit for Performance-Constrained Analog/RF/mmW ICs and expressed great hopes for its growth in the field of 5G/6G, predicting THz level speeds even at very conservative lithographic feature sizes. Prof. Cressler believed SiGe HBT to be a possible candidate for a technology that would operate satisfactorily across an extensive range of temperatures, starting from mK levels to a few hundred Celsius. He described the operative mechanism behind SiGe HBT and its good performance in cryogenic temperatures needed for quantum computing. The speaker also described the SiGe device's immunity to intense radiation environments (mainly in space) and the origin of such radiation and its effects. Out of the different effects, Prof. Cressler's team focused on the single event transient (SET) phenomena and developed radiation-hardened SiGe circuits and systems by integrating device level TCAD and circuit level design. Lastly, he discussed the possibilities of deploying SiGe as a photosensitive element for integrated silicon-based photonic systems and the challenges associated with the endeavor.  

Following the end of the talk, the moderator, Mr. Chowdhury Akram Hossain (Senior Assistant Professor and Special Assistant of OSA, Faculty of Engineering, AIUB), announced the opening of a Q&A session, in which Prof. Cressler responded with enthusiasm to the questions raised by faculty members and guests in the audience. Dr. Md. Abdur Rahman (Professor and Associate Dean, Faculty of Engineering, AIUB) provided the closing remarks by thanking Prof. Cressler for the informative session and explaining a heavily scientific topic simply. After offering a digital token of Appreciation as a token of gratitude for sharing his valuable time and insight, Prof. Rahman extended an invitation to Prof. Cressler for future events organized by AIUB. 

The webinar was held on Zoom online platform and was attended by about 107 local and foreign participants. Additionally, the video was also live-streamed on the AIUB Facebook page. Dr. Md. Abdul Mannan (Professor and Director, Faculty of Engineering, AIUB), Mr. Nafiz Ahmed Chisty (Associate Professor and Head In-Charge, Dept. of EEE, AIUB), and Mr. Md. Saniat Rahman Zishan (Associate Professor and Head, Dept. of CoE, AIUB) co-hosted the event.