The Louvain School of Engineering of Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) is seeking for three RF Device Engineering PhD students (4 years) and one post-doc (3 years) to work on advanced techniques for on-wafer characterization and modelling of Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) devices in wide frequency and temperature ranges.

Louvain School of Engineering has been pioneering and promoting the use of RF-SOI for high frequency applications for over 30 years, and has accumulated decades of experience in the field. We are now recruiting highly motivated and interested candidates to help us with our investigation towards next generation FD-SOI CMOS transistors below 22 nm to tackle applications in the RF and mm-wave domains such as telecommunications, radars, imaging, sensing, etc. Those scientific investigations will be conducted in the framework of several European Chips JU projects (SOIL, ArCTIC, FAMES, Move2THz). The candidates will collaborate with the best universities, research centers (imec (Be), CEA-Leti (Fr), etc.) and companies (STMicroelectronics (Fr), GlobalFoundries (De), SOITEC (Fr), etc.).

Key responsibilities include:

• On-wafer characterization of SOI substrates and MOSFET devices over a wide frequency band (from dc up to 325 GHz) in a large temperature range from cryogenic (4 K) to high-temperatures (250°C); extraction of small-signal equivalent circuits and main Figures of Merit (FoM);
• In-depth characterization and physical understanding of non-stationary/transient phenomena in advanced SOI-based MOSFET devices, such as self-heating, electro-thermal coupling, substrate network response, trapping, noise;
• TCAD simulations (using commercial software: Synopsis, Silvaco, …) of SOI substrates and MOSFET devices;
• Modelling of SOI-based substrates;
• Modelling of advanced FD-SOI transistors down to 10 nm, including (i) self-heating phenomena and (ii) substrate and back-gate network;
• Reliability and harsh environment (temperature, radiation) study of the advanced FD-SOI MOSFETs;
• Collaboration with device and reliability engineers and researchers working at Incize (Be), SOITEC (Fr), CEA-Leti (Fr), ST-Microelectronics (Fr), GlobalFoundries (De), etc.
• Dissemination of the scientific results via international conferences and writing of scientific articles.

Position Requirements

• Master in Physics or Electrical Engineering with semiconductor device analysis experience is a must;
• Experience in using TCAD simulation software is a plus;
• Familiarity with vector-network analyzer microwave analysis is a plus;
• Experience with on-wafer measurements is a plus;
• Understanding of broadband high-frequency and analog device figures of merit is a must;
• Good communication skills and ability to work across functional teams of device, electrical characterization, reliability and layout is a must;
• Good English speaking and writing skills (at least B2) is a must.

Hosting lab information

The PhD students will be hosted by the RF-SOI Group of the Louvain School of Engineering. Under the guidance of Prof. J.-P. Raskin, the group has pioneered the widespread use of SOI for RF and microwave applications by establishing a clear path to transform lossy SOI substrates into quasi-lossless material. Thanks to those developments SOITEC’s eSI™ RF-SOI substrate has been able to displace III-V on the mobile handset RF switch market and at present almost all new smartphones have RF-SOI inside.

To apply

If you are interested in working within our group and meet the above requirements, please get in touch with us using our contact form.