Ashraf Alam Expertise

Bio

Professor Alam holds the Jai N. Gupta Endowed Chair professorship at Purdue University, where his research focuses on the physics and technology of semiconductor devices. From 1995 to 2003, he was with Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ working on optoelectronic integrated circuits. Since joining Purdue in 2004,  Dr. Alam has published over 300 papers on biosensors, transistors, solar cells, and flexible electronics. Many of these papers focus on intrinsic reliability physics of the corresponding electronic devices.  He is a fellow of IEEE, APS, and AAAS. His awards include the 2006 IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Medal for contributions to device technology and 2015 SRC Technical Excellence Award for fundamental contributions to reliability physics. His lectures on Reliability Physics of Nanoscale Devices can be found at https://nanohub.org/resources/16560

Current Research Interest:

Our work on reliability physics focuses on understanding the detailed physical mechanism of the degradation mode and how it affects the system level performance. For example, we have been working on understanding and reducing self-heating in modern transistors to improve the performance/reliability of mobile and IoT applications. We are working on forward and inverse modeling of solar cells and solar farms because it will reduce the unit cost of renewable energy. We are working on the encapsulation physics of biochemical sensors so that they survive the harsh, salty, fluidic environment within the body or in the soil. And, we are developing new characterization techniques to identify counterfeit or cloned ICs, so that the an electronic system fail prematurely, perhaps with catastrophic consequences. For details, see https://sites.google.com/view/alam-research-group/home