Current Research Direction

Our research group is currently working in a wide spectrum of areas, enabling the integration of power devices and RF devices to form single chip systems. Our group has worked extensive in the development of CMOS compatible HV fabrication processes for automotive and consumer applications in the 40-100V range. We also has on-going collaboration with our industrial research partners to develop discrete and integrated power M OSFETs, silicon and SiGe based BiCMOS fabrication processes for smart power ICs and wireless applications, respectively.
In the past few years, we have focused in the design and implementation of VLSI power management circuits. This includes the demonstration of integrated soft-switching topology with predictive dead-time control and a practical DVS (Dynamic Voltage Scaling) system in 2004. We are also working on the integrated DC-DC converters with digital control. One of our aims is to prove that digital controller is a viable approach for portable power management. We were able to demonstrate an integrated DC-DC converter with dynamically adjustable power transistor size for power conversion efficiency optimization at ISPSD’06 for the first time. This work allowed our group to win best student paper award for the 3rd time at this conference. We also have activities in integrated digital Class D power audio amplifiers with distortion suppression feedback to achieve highly competitive performance.
Given the fact that the nature of our work is mainly experimental based. This includes exploring the possibilities of adding new device modules such as RF power transistors and/or high voltage (HV) transistors to enhance the functional features of current CMOS/BiCMOS processes. It is very critical to collaborate with industrial partners. Our industrial collaborators are the key reasons that allow us to implement device and circuit ideas in non-standard CMOS fabrication processes with large die size.
Power management is currently an intensely pursued field. We are working on integrated digitally controlled DC-DC converters for portable power applications. Our focused is on the integration of the controller with power output stages.
The diagram below is a quick snap shot of the research activities in our group.