The U.S. Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG) has co-sponsored the groundbreaking work of Dr. Qin Wang from RISE Research Institutes of Sweden (www.ri.se) on the effects of radiation on Wide Bandgap (WBG) semiconductor devices. The ONRG provides worldwide science and technology-based solutions to meet the current and future challenges. The command reaches out to the broad global technical community and the operational fleet/force commands to foster cooperation in the areas of mutual interest and to bring the full range of possibilities to the Navy and Marine Corps, (https:// www.onr.navy.mil/en/Science-Technology/ONR-Global).

Emerging WBG semiconductors hold the potential to revolutionize the electronics world nowadays. The most mature and developed WBG materials to date are silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN), which possess bandgaps of 3.3 eV and 3.4 eV respectively, whereas Si has a bandgap of 1.1 eV. The WBG materials enable high breakdown voltage, high thermal conductivity, and radiation resistance ability, which is superior to Si for many applications, such as 5G/6G network, autonomous vehicles, power converters in energy and power systems,  as well bio/chemical sensors in special scenarios.

A constant demand exists to improve these types of devices for system stability and reliability, for both defense & security, and for industrial applications. RISE has continuously worked on the improvement of the WGB-based electronic/photonic devices to enable them to operate in harsh environments: extremely high or low temperature variations, strong laser illumination, as well as xray and proton radiation conditions. The goal of this grant is to support the collaboration between RISE and U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to perform radiation testing on WBG semiconductor-based devices by investigating the single event effects in these devices, for instance GaN-based HEMTs (High Electron Mobility Transistors), as illustrated in the image.

This collaboration is led by Dr. Deji Coker, science director in ONRG.

About Qin Wang

She received her Ph.D. degree in solid state physics at Lund University in Sweden in 1999. Her research fields at Lund focused on electron transport physics in nanoelectronic devices based on quantum dots and quantum wires. Presently, she is a senior expert at RISE and an adjunct Prof. at KTH (Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden). She has worked on high performance electronic/photonic devices for imaging, life science and optical communication applications.

She is specialist in the device design, fabrication, monolithic or hybridization integration and characterization techniques of quantum structure-based LEDs, lasers, modulators and photodetectors. She has rich experience to work with industrial and academic partners through national and international collaborations, for instance Airbus defence, Saab and European Space Agency (ESA). She is active in EC funded EU projects from FP6 to H2020 programs including ongoing EU UltimateGaN, CAMART2, and PhotonHub projects. She is supervisor for Master and PhD degree students, and author or co-author of more than 100 international journal, conference and workshop papers.

She is a senior member of IEEE, a board member of IEEE Photonic Society Swedish chapter. She feels honored as one of representatives of IEEE Women-in-Photonics (WIP) and has continually taken efforts to promote young women students and professionals to join photonics by different activities. She is especially grateful all support from Lauren Mecum-Smith and Lisa Sandt from headquarter of IEEE Photonics Society, which enabled her to organize a series of Women-in-STEM events/activities since 2015, as listed partially below:

In addition, Qin Wang was awarded by SPIE Women-in-Optics planner 2019, honoring the work of women in the field, The planner has been distributed in more than 25 countries worldwide annually.