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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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THE SCHOOL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Under the provisions of the regulations for the degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
on Friday, May 27, 2022
11:00 AM
in Love 109
& via
BlueJeans Video Conferencing
https://bluejeans.com/252222750/0902
will be held the
DISSERTATION DEFENSE
for
Jinho Hah
"Investigation of Processing Condition on the Reliability and Performance of Future Memory Devices"
Committee Members:
Prof. Samuel Graham, Advisor, ME/MSE
Prof. Eric Vogel, Co-Advisor, MSE
Prof. C. P. Wong, MSE
Prof. Alan Doolittle, ECE
Prof. Arijit Raychowdhury, ECE
Abstract:
About a quarter of the total semiconductor market is comprised of memory technologies. However, due to the limits in scalability related to Moore’s Law, the need for additional memory capacity and bandwidth is increasing. Currently, dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) is in high-volume but is reaching its scaling limit. To overcome the DRAM scaling limit with higher bandwidth, lower power, and smaller surface area, through-silicon-via (TSV) stacking method via thermo-compression bonding (TCB) technology has been widely employed due to the placement accuracy for 3D packaging technology and manufacturing 3D high bandwidth memory (HBM) DRAM modules. In addition to utilizing TCB technology to DRAM modules, memristors, as an emerging memory is another memory class that can help overcome the scaling limit and holds a huge promise to overcome the current bottlenecks.
Two project areas will be discussed. In the first project, comprehensive and comparative analysis between the TCB-processed and reflow-processed solder joint reliability performance is investigated. This study investigates the failure analysis of the solder joints via detailed solder joint and solder joint/bond pad interface characterization to understand the reliability issues of the emerging TCB-processed packages. In the second project, memristor, a class of resistive random-access memory (RRAM) will be explored. The RRAM or memristor is an emerging memory that shows promise to overcome the current obstacles in conventional memory systems based on a von-Neumann architecture. So far, the difficulty in achieving multiple resistance states and obtaining resistance linearity remain as the challenges towards commercialization and for in-memory computing and synaptic device (i.e., neuromorphic) applications. In this work, the effect of the chemical environment of the HfOx/Ti interface and the processing condition during analog operation on the memristor performance are explored. The presence of excess oxygen concentration at the interface and fundamental understanding of the local thermal and chemical environment at the memristor filament region during analog RESET operation are investigated to better understand the memristors’ resistive switching mechanisms.
