Advances in Devices for Wireless and Optoelectronic Systems

Professor Patrick Fay, Associate Professor,
Dept. of Electrical Engineering,
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556

Over the last several years, significant and rapid advancements in device performance and integration have spurred dramatic improvements in performance and availability of wireless and optical communication systems, as well as enabling new sensing and imaging applications. Wireless communication devices have become ubiquitous, optical communication system components for bit rates in excess of 40 Gb/s are now commercially available, and millimeter-wave imaging systems have been demonstrated for scientific, avionic, and security applications. Despite these advancements, there are still many opportunities for enhancing device and system performance through novel device designs and approaches.
In this talk, an overview of device research in Prof. Fay's research group at the University of Notre Dame will be presented. Recent demonstrations of the first III-V native oxide enhancement-mode MOSFETs, promising devices for high-efficiency wireless systems, will be presented. The performance of antimonide-based backward diode detectors for submillimeter-wave detectors and imaging arrays and their potential applications will be discussed, and our recent development of nanoantenna-based optical detectors and arrays will be presented for multispectral imaging and communications applications.

Prof. Fay received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1996, his MS degree in 1993 from the University of Illinois and his BS degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1991. After graduating from the University of Illinois, he served as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before joining the faculty of the University of Notre Dame where he is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Director of the Notre Dame Nanofabrication Facility. His interests include high-speed monolithic optoelectronic integrated circuit (OEIC) and MMIC design, and fabrication and characterization of Si and III-V devices for microwave, RF, and ultra-high-speed digital applications. He has published more than 50 papers in these and associated fields.