Elaheh Ahmadi
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Engineering·Early-career
Electric grids, electric vehicles, industrial automation and high-speed trains all need switches that can handle very high voltages — roughly 2,000 to 20,000 volts — while wasting as little energy as possible. Today's semiconductor devices struggle to meet the efficiency and reliability demands at those voltages.
- Fields
Engineering
Materials Science
Physics
- Topics
gallium oxide
β-Ga2O3
power electronics
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Demonstrate enhancement-mode β-Ga2O3 fin field-effect transistors with breakdown voltages beyond 3 kV, specific on-resistance under 1 milliohm-cm², and switching efficiency above 98% at 15 kHz.
- Test how slanted fin sidewalls and nitrogen implantation between fins redistribute electric fields to raise breakdown voltage in gallium oxide FinFETs.
- Fabricate and compare FinFETs on epitaxial layers grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition versus halide vapor phase epitaxy, and measure how substrate thickness affects on-resistance.
- Develop β-(Al,Ga)2O3 regrowth on fin sidewalls by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy and determine how regrowth conditions affect channel electron mobility, interface trap density and transistor behavior.
- Develop Hf(Si)O2 gate dielectrics by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy and relate deposition conditions to breakdown strength, dielectric constant and leakage current.
More about the research
This project develops transistors built from beta-gallium oxide (β-Ga2O3), a material whose wide bandgap lets it tolerate very strong electric fields before breaking down, as a route to lower-waste power conversion.
Why it matters
High-voltage switches that lose less energy could cut waste in electrical distribution grids, electric vehicles, industrial automation and electric mass transit such as high-speed trains, where existing device technology no longer meets efficiency and reliability needs. Results also indicate which gallium oxide growth technique suits each fabrication step going forward.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Anhar Bhuiyan
University of Massachusetts-Lowell, MA·Engineering
Establish a low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) growth platform that produces thick, lightly silicon-doped β-Ga₂O₃ layers with high electron mobility and very few unwanted background charge carriers.
Yuping Zeng
University of Delaware, DE·Engineering·Early-career
Find the material, surface and interface causes that make GaN-on-Si high electron mobility transistors perform worse than GaN-on-SiC devices, by linking fabrication process steps to measured device performance.
Ariful Haque
Texas State University, TX·Materials Science
Grow uniform, delamination-free diamond films on gallium oxide (Ga2O3) by first forming an ultrathin quenched carbon (Q-carbon) interlayer through pulsed laser annealing.
The school
University of California-Los Angeles: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 803 research doctorates a year.
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