Ghavam G. Shahidi (born 1959) is anIranian-American electrical engineer andIBM Fellow. He is the director of Silicon Technology at theIBM Thomas J Watson Research Center. He is best known for his pioneering work insilicon-on-insulator (SOI)complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology since the late 1980s.
He studied electrical engineering atMIT, where he wrote a PhD thesis on "velocity overshoot in deeply scaledMOSFETs" (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors), under supervision of Professor Dimitri A. Antoniadis.
A60 nanometersiliconMOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) wasfabricated by Shahidi with Antoniadis and Henry I. Smith at MIT in 1986.[1][2] The device was fabricated usingX-ray lithography.[3]
Shahidi joinedIBM Research in 1989, where he initiated and subsequently led the development ofsilicon-on-insulator (SOI)complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology atIBM.[4] It was called the SOI Research Program, which he led at theIBM Thomas J Watson Research Center.[4] Since then, he was the chief architect of SOI technology at IBM, leading the development of high-performance CMOS and SOI technologies atIBM Microelectronics. He made fundamental contributions to SOI technology, from materials research to the development of the first commercially viable devices. He was supported by his bossBijan Davari, who believed in the technology and supported Shahidi's team.[5]
He was a key figure in making SOI CMOS technology a manufacturable reality and enabling the continuedminiaturization ofmicroelectronics.[6] Early SOI technology had a number of problems with manufacturing, modeling, circuits, and reliability, and it was not clear that it could offer performance gains over established technologies.[5] In the early 1990s, he demonstrated a novel technique of combiningsiliconepitaxial overgrowth and chemical mechanical polishing to prepare device-quality SOI material forfabricating devices and simple circuits, which led to IBM expanding its research program to include SOI substrates. He was also the first to demonstrate the power-delay advantage of SOI CMOS technology over traditional bulk CMOS inmicroprocessor applications. He overcame barriers preventing thesemiconductor industry's adoption of SOI, and was instrumental in driving SOI substrate development to the quality and cost levels suitable for mass-production.[6]
This led to the first commercial use of SOI in mainstream CMOS technology.[4] SOI was first commercialized in 1995, when Shahidi's work on SOI convinced John Kelly, who ran IBM's server division, to adopt SOI in theAS/400 line of server products, which used220 nm CMOS with copper metallization SOI devices. In early 2001, he used SOI to developed a low-powerRF CMOS device, resulting in increased radio frequency. Later that year, IBM was set to introduce130 nanometer CMOS SOI devices with copper andlow-κ dielectric for the back end, based on Shahidi's work.[5]
His work resulted in the qualification of multiple CMOS SOI technologies and their transfer to manufacturing; establishment of design infrastructure; and the first mainstream use of SOI. He remained with IBM Microelectronics as the director of high-performance logic development until 2003. He then moved back to IBM's Watson's Laboratory as the Director of Silicon Technology.[7]
As director of silicon technology at IBM Research, he was researchinglithography technology in the early 2000s. In 2004, he announced plans for IBM to commercializelithography based on light filtered through water, and then X-ray lithography within the next several years. He also announced that his team were investigating 20 newsemiconductor materials.[7]
Shahidi received theInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers'J J Ebers Award in 2006, for his "contributions and leadership in the development of Silicon-On-Insulator CMOS technology".[8] He is currently the director of Silicon Technology at theIBM Thomas J Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.[6]