Hello,

Welcome to my web page.  It has been at least a couple of years since I updated it.  (Click here to see the previous version.)  It is nearly the end of 2002, which explains how I can find a few spare minutes to finally get this done.  This year four of my students passed milestones (less painful than passing kidney stones, but only slightly).  Xun Pang defended his Ph.D. dissertation on electromigration of ultranarrow interconnects.  Dr. Pang, Dr. Al Kriman, and I published his second paper on the very interesting results.  Xun continues to live in Texas and work at ST Microelectronics.

In the past semester, Jie Su, Heng Yang, and Minjun Yang defended their masters theses.  They are now all continuing their work toward their Ph.D.s, which I hope is successful for all of them.  Alexandra Imre (co-advised with Wolfgang Porod) is making huge strides forward in investigating the properties of nanomagnets.  My newest student, Ling Zhou, is starting to work on this project as well.  My three Ph.D. candidates (Jie (Jayne) Wu, Qingling Hang and Wenchuang (Walter) Hu) are making great progress toward critical data mass for  their Ph.D. dissertations.  Clicking on their names will bring up pages highlighting some of their work.  All of them are interested in careers in academia – I recommend them all very highly.

My research has gone in some interesting directions.  In particular, Heng and I have developed a simple, leak-free microfabricated check valve.  Jayne and I are developing a new technique for treating tremors due to Parkinson’s disease.  Qingling and I are developing new techniques for the controlled deposition of molecules, and Walter is making progress in converting the Hitachi field emission SEM into an electron beam  lithography tool.  We are currently installing a new beam blanker on the Hitachi S-4500.  The blanker is a design of Mr. Earl Weltmer of Scanservice Corp.

The NCRECES website is now up and running, albeit at a low level.  What is NCRECES?  NCRECES (pronounced almost like “increases”) stands for “National Coalition for Recruiting Electrical and Computer Engineering Students.”  It is an organization developed to help university engineering faculty (now for EE and CSE) to coordinate graduate recruiting efforts.  I plan to expand on that over the next year to make it truly valuable to graduate school programs.  If you are a professor in EE or CSE, you can find contacts at these schools to help you in your recruiting efforts.  If you are not a member, it’s free and easy, so just log on and sign up.  Hopefully you will then get contacts from faculty for you to help them recruit your students to their graduate programs.  If you want more information, you can read my introductory NCRECES letter.

On the teaching front, I became both Greg Snider and myself for four months (a most exhausting undertaking).  Since Greg is in Australia on sabbatical, I taught his IC Fabrication course, EE 446.  Thankfully Greg left that course in a remarkably organized state.  It could practically teach itself if there were an “on” button.  This is no mean feat for such a complex undertaking.  The students fabricated a full set of CMOS masks with up to 10,000 transistors on the circuits.  This does not include the test chip with a multitude of test structures.  It was a highly successful semester.  We used our own LPCVD system for the polysilicon for the first time.  This came out very well.  Mike Thomas and Mark Richmond did a great job of improving and maintaining the CVD and the wafer stepper used this year.  Trisha Metz was great at helping me stay organized with the myriad details involved, and Ling Zhou was an extraordinarily helpful TA.  Everyone, including the students, were enthusiastic and involved in the course.  It was a real pleasure.  One additional outcome was the creation of a set of “how-to” videos for operating more than a dozen pieces of lab equipment.  These videos were done by Rick Jandrain, undergraduate, Ling, Tanya Orlova, and Jayne Wu.  They can be viewed at the new website for the Center for Nano Science and Technology.

One interesting feature of the course are the really nice “graffiti” patterns Greg created on the wafer.  A picture of the Dome and Church really confused the students as it was created out of many lithographic layers, but came out beautifully.  The words to the Notre Dame Fight Song were included on the chip so students could sing along as they tested their wafers (it is a music chip).  Also, the Notre Dame seal and a quote were included for good measure.  As you can see, the course provided many opportunities for the students to enjoy their work throughout the semester.  Test results of devices and inverters can be seen here.

I remain Associate Chair of EE so long as Prof. Yih-Fang Huang can put up with me.  The College is ramping up for phase I of a building plan to expand the Haessert Center on the North edge of campus.  This will free up space for all departments in the Fitzpatrick and Cushing Engineering complex.  I am involved in planning the new facility, among other tasks.  I am told that funding for the “big” engineering building with the planned clean rooms is moving ahead slowly, but still well considering the economy.  Those plans are in no way on hold.

The EE Department’s undergraduate enrollment has expanded considerably, to about 40 students per class, but our expanding graduate student enrollment (now at 107 students) is what really keeps me busy finding new space for desks.  This is frustrating but satisfying work knowing that the Department is growing at a healthy rate.

On the personal side, Yaakov Sloman’s and my South Bend Hebrew Day School First Lego League robotics team did quite well this year.  We came in 13th overall out of 40.  The kids had a great time, as did all of the 300 or so participants at the Stepan Center at Notre Dame.  Wolfgang Porod, Carol Osmer and volunteers did a spectacular job of organizing the event.

I continue to try to upgrade the computer lab at the Day School.  This has been an opportunity for me to learn what “EDO” means, and what are the limitations to 200 MHz Pentium I computers.  Nevertheless, when I am done, I hope the lab is at least in somewhat better condition, although not nearly optimum.  If you have a couple dozen or so surplus computers to give away to the school, please contact me.  I would be happy to replace all the computers with better ones at any time.

Thanks for your attention.  If you have any questions about any research projects, I would be most happy to talk with you.  (My full CV can be viewed here.)  Please feel free to contact me any time.

Sincerely,

Gary H. Bernstein