In April 2024, Intel announced its 2023 Outstanding Researcher Awards. We are pleased to report that Dr. Yanjie Shao and Professor Jesús del Alamo were among the fifteen leading academic researchers to receive this award. The annual award program recognizes the exceptional contributions made through Intel university-sponsored research that help further Intel’s mission of creating world-changing technology that improves the lives of everyone on the planet.
Yanjie Shao, a Postdoctoral Researcher at MIT, and Jesús del Alamo, Donner Professor and Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT were selected for this award for their work on “Exploring the Limits of Vertical-Nanowire Tunnel Field-Effect Transistors in the Nanoscale.” This was the topic of research of Shao’s PhD thesis at MIT.
In their work, Shao and del Alamo demonstrated vertical nanowire tunnel field-effect transistors (TFETs) with characteristics that greatly push the current state of the art. The team showed record on-state performance among TFETs reported in the literature and improved subthreshold slope in broken-band systems. The team also demonstrated a performance boost over state-of-the-art metal-oxide-semiconductor FETs at the targeted operating voltage of 0.3 V, which has long been pursued for TFETs. Ultra-low voltage transistor operation is critical for future high energy efficient electronic systems.
“This is an outstanding achievement by both Dr. Shao and Professor del Alamo,” says Tomás Palacios, MTL Director. “To add to the impressive nature of this award, it should be noted that Dr. Shao is one of the very few non-professor honorees in the entire history of the award.”
“I would like to thank Intel for their generous funding on this project, and the mentorship they provided us throughout the whole process,” says Dr. Shao. “I also want to thank MIT.nano and MTL for the device fabrication and material characterization support.”
Congratulations Dr. Shao and Professor del Alamo!