Professor Andre Salama

Dr. Salama received his Honours B.A.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia in 1961, his M.A.Sc. degree in 1962 and the Ph.D. in 1966. He joined the faculty of the University of Toronto in 1967 and in 1977 was promoted to the rank of full Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he held the J.M. Ham Chair in Microelectronics from 1987 to 1997. In recognition of his scholarly achievements and preeminence in the field of microelectronics, he was appointed to his present position of University Professor in 1992.

Professor Salama's excellent scholarly work and contributions to the development of power semiconductor devices and the design of integrated circuits is further recognized through the many awards he has received. He was awarded the ITAC/NSERC Research Fellowship in information technology (1989-90), the Canada Council I.W. Killam Memorial Prize in Engineering (1994) for outstanding career contributions to the field of microelectronics. He is also the recipient of the IEEE Millennium Medal, the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Awards from NSERC and the Canadian Semiconductor Technology Conference. Dr. Salama is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, a member of the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario and of the Electrochemical Society.

Dr. Salama has made seminal and outstanding contributions to semiconductor device research and analog and digital integrated circuit design, through his extraordinary innovation, creativity and his leadership in academic research. He is internationally recognized for:

• Contributions to non-planar and power semiconductor devices and circuits which include the original proposals for VMOS (V groove MOS) power transistors as well as work on LDMOS (Lateral Double Diffused MOS) transistors and SINFETs (Schottky Injection Field Effect Transistors) for high voltage and high power applications. Included were contributions to the development of lateral RESURF (Reduced Surfaced Field) MOS devices which are essential to the implementation of high voltage devices compatible with low voltage CMOS or BiCMOS processes for telecom and smart power integrated circuits applications. These contributions were extended to the design of single chip subscriber line interface circuits to provide advanced subscriber services such as internet access and video on demand by deploying broadband communications systems into existing telephone networks. Several million microchips using high voltage devices and processes developed by Dr. Salama and coworkers have been put into commercial telecom systems.
• Contributions to analog IC design including basic studies of the impact of device scaling on MOS analog performance and the development of circuits techniques to alleviate the problems associated with scaling and reducing power consumption in analog integrated circuit design. These techniques have included some of the original work on CMOS current mode circuits used in the development of analog to digital and digital to analog converters for telecom signal processing applications.
• Contributions to micropower devices and analog integrated circuits design including the development of a novel (sub one volt) JFET (junction field effect transistor) and its application in micropower low voltage circuits. The devices and circuits developed have been used in the fabrication of hearing aid amplifiers and filter conditioning circuitry.
• Contributions to digital integrated circuit design in low power CMOS, BiCMOS and GaAs technologies have included studies of charge redistribution and noise margins in domino CMOS logic and the development of a method of solving the inversion problem in domino logic (Latched Domino). Other contributions have involved the development of novel forms of logic including Differential Pass Transistor Logic (DPTL) for CMOS technology, dynamic logic for GaAs MESFET technology, adiabatic energy recovery logic for CMOS technology and integrated injection logic for bipolar technology.
• Contributions to high speed communications and wireless circuits which include the first successful attempt at designing and implementing high efficiency class E GaAs power amplifiers for CDMA wireless transceivers. Other contributions to this area involved the development of clock and data recovery (CDR) circuits for high speed serial communications. Such circuits are critical in achieving on- and off-chip Gigabit/s communication rates.
• Contributions to the design and implementation of SiGe HBTs (heterojunction bipolar transistors) and SiGe MOSFETs using bandgap engineering concepts. These contributions include a novel Si/SiGe/Si p-MOSFET using a buried SiGe channel, with triangular Ge profile, which resulted in the best ever reported channel mobility, thus making the device a contender for advanced CMOS technologies.
• Dr. Salama's current work involves research dealing with the design, development and implementation of very large scale and ultra large scale integrated circuits for use in high speed, high density communications and computer systems. These microchips are crucial to the development of the next generation of information technology systems.

In addition, Dr. Salama's leadership in promoting Canada's microelectronics university research programs through involvement with NSERC and the Canadian Microelectronics Corporation, and his efforts in fostering Canadian industrial applications are widely recognized and appreciated. He is also recognized for his effectiveness as a teacher and developer of trained manpower, particularly graduate students. He has continuously played a highly constructive role in organizing faculty colleagues, government agencies, and industrial partners to work together toward agreed goals in research and education. Microelectronics research throughout Canada has benefited from his contributions and leadership. His crowning achievement to date may well be his actions both in the founding of the Canadian Microelectronics Corporation, which provides infrastructure support to microelectronics university researchers in Canada and of Micronet, a Federal Network of Centres of Excellence focussing on university-industry cooperative research in the areas of submicron devices, circuits and systems for Ultra Large Scale Integration, and subsequently in heading up this Network. This and his other achievements in assisting the development of communications and collaborations in his field are beyond compare in Canada and place him in a very select group internationally.