Dominique Baillargeat and Johannes Russer
Technical Committee (TC) 8 is the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S)
TC on RF Nanotechnology, and our website can be found at https://mtt.org/technical-committees/tc-8-rf-nanotechnology-committee/.
TC-8 focuses on future electronic systems, including those for communications, sensors, imaging, and advanced medical applications, that will face substantially increasing demands and challenges. Nanotechnology is expected to be an enabling technology for many of the new electronic devices and circuits that these systems will require. Only through new nanoelectronic devices based on novel materials and nanotechnology will we be able to go beyond Moore’s law and respond adequately to these challenges.
Our activities are often in collaboration with several other MTT-S committees, and our fields of interest include the following:
Chaired by Prof. Dominique Baillargeat, with Assistant Prof. Johannes Russer as vice chair, TC-8 had 23 members, two Young Professional members, and one affiliate member in 2021 and 2022, including nine IEEE Fellows. New members are added to the committee through nomination and voting by the committee members. During 2021 and 2022, two Young Professional members and one affiliate member were added. The members of TC-8 represent a wide variety of nanotechnologies for RF applications from both academia and industry as well as from various parts of the globe, including North America, Europe, and Asia.
The members of TC-8 are expected to be active in the field of nanomaterials and nanotechnologies for RF applications and to participate in MTT-S and TC-8 activities related to TC-8’s fields of interest. During the two last years, TC-8 members contributed to the nomination of Distinguished Microwave Lecturers as well as to proposals for workshops and focus sessions for the MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS). TC-8 members also play pivotal roles in several MTT-S-sponsored conferences, including the IEEE MTT-S International Conference on Numerical Electromagnetic (EM) and Multiphysics Modeling and Optimization (NEMO2022), the International Scientific Radio Union (URSI) U.S. National Radio Science Meeting (NRSM), and others. TC-8 members also represent the MTT-S in the IEEE Nanotechnology Council (NTC) and chair the Nanomaterials Committee of the NTC. TC-8 members give keynote and other important talks related to nanotechnology and nanocomponents dedicated to RF applications. In addition, over the period, TC-8 also contributed to a focus issue related to nanoscale ferroelectrics in Microwave Magazine.
Stephen Goodnick received the Distinguished Educator Award from the MTT-S in 2021. The Distinguished Educator Award recognizes a distinguished educator in the field of microwave engineering and science who best exemplifies the special human qualities of Fred Rosenbaum, who considered teaching a high calling and demonstrated his dedication to the Society through tireless service.
Dominique Baillargeat was elevated to Fellow of IEEE for contributions to developments of nanomaterials for RF packaging and sensors. In 2022, 13 honorees were awarded the status of Fellow of IEEE with the MTT-S as the evaluating Society.
Our Distinguished Lecturers gave virtual and in-person talks during the period:
Over the period, more than 50 papers and articles were published by TC-8 members in IEEE transactions and other high-level journals relevant to the fields of interest of our committee.
At IMS2021, TC-8 sponsored the workshop “Materials by Design for Microwave and Millimeter-Wave (mm-Wave) Communications.” The workshop was organized by Nathan Orloff and Mitch Wallis. This workshop brought together researchers in materials synthesis and experts in microwave and mm-wave modeling to show how devices based on new materials can be designed and validated with computational and analytical approaches.
Eight special sessions were sponsored by TC-8 during the period. These special sessions were organized at several conferences, and they addressed diverse topics related to the fields of interest of TC-8.
Four special sessions on “Microwave Quantum Information Technology” were organized by Johannes Russer (cochair of TC-8) and his colleagues at URSI NRSM2021 and NRSM2022 for the modeling of stochastic EM problems, including those in the context of microwave quantum technologies, at the 2021 International Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society Symposium (August 2021) and at the 15th International Conference on Advanced Technologies, Systems, and Services in Telecommunications.
Two sessions were organized at the IMS: one in 2021 by Dominique Baillargeat and Valentina Palazzi, “Additive Manufacturing-Based RF Sensors and RFIDs for Rugged Internet of Things and Digital Twins in Smart Cities,” and one in 2022 by Jeong-Sun Moon and David Brown, “Next-Generation mm-Wave Gallium Nitride Technologies and Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits for 5G/6G and U.S. Department of Defense Applications.”
Dimitri Pavlidis was involved in the International Organizing Committee of two conferences, Wocsdice and TWHM.
Kamel Haddadi organized two special sessions during the period: one session during NEMO2022 (July 2022 in Limoges, France), “EM and Multiphysics Multiscale Modeling and Characterization for Advanced and Efficient Materials,” and one session at the 2021 International Conference on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications (August 2021 in Honolulu, HI, USA).
Figure 1. Information panel for the day’s sessions.
Figure 2. (From left) Prof. Dominique Baillargeat (NEMO2022 chair), Dr. Stéphane Bila (NEMO2022 TPC chair), Prof. Rashaunda Henderson (2022 MTT-S president), and Dr. Qi-Jun Zhang (NEMO ExCom chair) at the City Hall of Limoges for the welcome reception.
A special issue, “Nanoscale Ferroelectrics for Advanced Microwave Applications,” was organized by TC-8 with guest editors Luca Pierantoni and Davide Mencarelli. The issue was published in September 2021 and included two articles. They report recent developments in nanoferroelectrics. The first, written by Dragoman et al. [1], presents a comprehensive review of emerging nanoscale ferroelectric materials in novel nanoelectronics devices, including phase shifters, phased antenna arrays, filters, field-effect transistors (FETs), ferroelectric tunneling junctions, memristors/memtransistors (neuromorphic nanoelectronics), and negative-capacitance ferroelectric transistors. The second, by Das and Khan [2], discusses ferroelectricity in CMOS-compatible hafnium oxides and the revival of ferroelectric FET technology. In particular, the demonstrated ferroelectricity, low permittivity, high coercive field, environmentally friendly composition, and excellent CMOS compatibility in doped thin-film hafnium is expected to unleash the promise of ferroelectric FETs.
Focus on NEMO2022
After an interruption in 2020 due to COVID-19, the NEMO2022 was held from 6 to 8 July in Limoges, France (Figures 1 and 2). NEMO is an annual event, founded by the MTT-S, focused on EM and multiphysics-based CAD (EM-CAD), that rotates among Europe, North America, and Asia. It aims to stimulate a broad exploration of “disruptive” technologies of EM-CAD and traditional topics. The conference is sponsored by the MTT-S, and the general chair was Dominique Baillargeat. More than 120 attendees participated in the conference. Five half-day sessions were proposed by the Organizing Committee comprising technical and special sessions, keynote speeches, and one focused session. There were 16 technical sessions with 10 regular sessions on
Plans for the next two years might be of interest to the general microwave community. For IMS2023, TC-8 will sponsor the workshop “Quantum Circuits, Methods, and Algorithms in EM and Microwave Applications,” co-organized by Johannes Russer, and the workshop “Engineered Surfaces for EM Propagation Control in Emerging Applications,” co-organized by Ryan Cadwell.
[1] M. Dragoman, M. Aldrigo, D. Dragoman, S. Iordanescu, A. Dinescu, and M. Modreanu, “The rise of ferroelectricity at nanoscale: Nanoelectronics is rediscovering the ferroelectricity,” IEEE Nanotechnol. Mag., vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 8–19, Oct. 2021, doi: 10.1109/MNANO.2021.3098217.
[2] D. Das and A. I. Khan, “Ferroelectricity in CMOS-compatible hafnium oxides: Reviving the ferroelectric field-effect transistor technology,” IEEE Nanotechnol. Mag., vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 20–32, Oct. 2021, doi: 10.1109/MNANO.2021.3098218.