Università Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM), Italy

The research activity of the electromagnetics-electronics group of UNIVPM brings unique experience in i) the frequency/time-domain full-wave multi-physics modeling of the combined electromagnetic-coherent transport problem in nano-structured materials as low-dimensional 1D-2D materials, with related devices, ii) CMOS device modeling and integrated circuit (IC) simulation and design, iii) measurement activities based on of Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM).  For (i), UnivPM has developed a computational platform combining ab initio models with full-wave models. From the theoretical models and techniques, efficient software for the analysis/design are developed. For (ii), UnivPM has designed analog and RF integrated circuits in the SoA CMOS Si/SiGe technologies. For (iii), UnivPM avails of Atomic Force, Scanning Tunneling, and Scanning Microwave Microscopy (AFM, ATM, SMM).

Objectives. The aim of the multi-physics modeling (i) is to define new functionalities and new concept devices (beyond Moore) exploiting the unique features of nanostructured materials, e.g. in mixers, RF detectors, sensors, antennas, logic circuits, by modeling phenomena from the nano- to the  meso-scale. The aim of IC design (ii) is developing readout circuits for the extraction of sensor information in terms of electrical quantities, data processing and A/D conversion. The aim of (iii) is the microwave characterization of nano-materials and biological samples.

Features. The activity (i) consists of multi-physics simulations of devices where the underline physics involves different phenomena, e.g. quantum transport, field theory, nano-mechanical waves, optical circuits, thermal propagation. Theoretical-numerical models are based on the solution of coupled system of equations, e.g. Schrödinger/Dirac, Maxwell-Boltzmann, etc. The activity (ii) consists on the design of electronic circuits for sensor interfacing using the same technology (single chip embedding) used for sensors fabrication, thus allowing SoA system integration and performance. The activity (iii) focuses on mapping electromagnetic properties (e.g. electrical conductivity, carrier mobility) in a non-contacting and non-invasive (photon energy on the order of 10 (μeV) mode, at microwave frequencies.

Resources:

UNIVPM avails the following laboratory resources: – Microwave Laboratory: two vector network analyzers (VNA) Agilent, model E5071C, featuring 8.5 GHz bandwidth, model E8361A, 70 GHz maximum bandwidth. – Photonics Laboratory: active anti-vibration tables, laser sources, detectors, fiber optic somponents, optical spectrum analyser working in the THz range, fiber-optic Fabry-Perot microscopy system for near/far field measurements of infrared reflectivity and absorption on micrometer scales. – Microscopy Laboratory: AFM Microscope, able to provide Electric Force Microscopy, Scanning Capacitance Microscopy and Kelvin Probe Microscopy, STM and broadband Scanning Microwave Microscope (SMM) for the characterization of electromagnetic and quantum-mechanical properties of materials. Cad Lab for IC desig nand Simulation

 

Role in NanoSmart:

UNIVPM will lead WP2: Design and simulation activities.

• Develop a general efficient numerical code for the self-consistent simulation of the combined electromagnetic-quantum transport problem, oriented to the 1D-material (CNT) and 2D-material application devices.
• Develop numerical strategies to deal with the huge different  aspect-ratio in the analysis of such nano-structures interfaced with the macroscopic environment.
• Perform Scanning Microwave Microscopy to characterize the electromagnetic properties of employed materials.
• Develop modeling of several components and their performances, including thermal properties
• Develop and design the analog preprocessing circuits to extract temperature and humidity information from HfS2/MoS2 sensors, to exploit the peculiarities of these devices, using the same available technology for integrating the sensors and the signal processing logic in the same die.

Develop the signal processing algorithms needed to extract physical quantities from the analog data

Key personnel:

Prof. Luca Pierantoni (male) received the ‘Laurea’ degree (summa cum laude) in Electronics Engineering in 1988 and the Ph.D. degree in 1993 in Electromagnetics from the Department of Electronics and Automatics at the University of Ancona, Italy. From 1996 to 1999 he worked at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, as Senior Research Scientist. In 2000, he joined the Università Politecnica delle Marche, Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione. His current research interests are in the investigation of the combined Maxwell-quantum transport problem in nanomaterials, the analysis of electrodynamics in nanostructures and in the development of computational techniques for the multi-physical modelling of nano-devices.  He is a member of the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN). Co-founder and first chair of the IEEE “RF Nanotechnology” technical committee (MTT-25). IEEE Nanotechnology Council (NTC) Distinguished Lecturer (2015-2016), IEEE MTT-S Distinguished Microwave Lecturer (DML), (2012-2014) and IEEE MTT-S Distinguished Microwave Lecturer Emeritus (DML-E), (2015-2016), IEEE/EuMA European Microwave Lecturer (EML). Member of the Nanotechnology Council (NTC) AdCom (2012-2016). Member of the International Microwave Symposium Technical Program Committee (IMS-TPC). Associate Editor of the IEEE Transaction on Nanotechnology (TNANO), IEEE Nanotechnology Express (ENANO), Journal of Computational Electronics (JCE, Springer), Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology (NMNT, INTECH). He is author or co-author of about 250 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. He is IEEE senior member.

Davide Mencarelli (male) worked as a Post-Doc at University Politecnica of Marche (UNIVPM), Italy (2005-2011) and as a Post-Doc at the Università Politecnica di Bari, Italy (2012-2013).  He joined the Department of Information Engineering of UNIVPM as Assistant Professor (2014).  From2014, he is also a member of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, Italy. He received (2002) the Laurea in Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering (110/110 cum laude from UNIVPM. He obtained the PhD degree (2005) from UNIVPM, in Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering. Research Areas: Electro-optical device modelling; wideband modulators based on the electro-optic effect; OPCB (Optical printed circuit boards); planar slot array antennas and microwave components; nano – field effect transistor (nano-FET); quantum transport in carbon nanotubes and 2D-material; Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM).  Scientific Production: more than 100 in peer-reviewed journals and conferences.

Marco Farina (male) was born in Luzern in 1966; completed the Laurea degree in electronics at the University of Ancona and was awarded the summa cum laude degree in 1990. In 1995 he received the Ph.D. degree from the same university. From 1991 to 1992 he was Technical Officer in the Italian Army. Since 1992 he has been with the Department of Electronics and Automatics at the University of Ancona as research fellow and worked as consulting engineer in electronics. Presently he is Full Professor in the same Department (currently Dipartimento di Ingegneria Biomedica, Elettronica e Telecomunicazioni).He is author, with Prof. T. Rozzi, of the book “Advanced electromagnetic analysis of passive and active planar structures”. His software for modeling of Microwave devices is currently used by a number of institutions and companies, among the others NASA, Coventor, Intel, L3 Comm. etc. Dr. Farina is Senior Member of IEEE and reviewer for AAAS Science Advances, Applied Physics Letters,  IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Component Letters, IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility, Sensors & Actuators A: Physical, IET Electronics Letters, IET Proc. Microwaves, Antennas and Propagation, IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, IET Micro & Nano Letters. He is a member of the Technical Committee of the IEEE MTT-Society TC-25 ” RF-Nanotechnology”.

Paolo Crippa (male) received the Laurea degree in Electronics Engineering (summa cum laude) from the Università degli Studi di Ancona, Italy, in 1994 and the Ph.D. degree in Electronics Engineering from the Polytechnic of Bari, Italy, in 1999. From 1994 to 1999 he was Research Fellow at the Department of Electronics and Automation, Università degli Studi di Ancona where in 1999 he was appointed Research Assistant as a member of the Technical Staff. Since 2006 he joined the Department of Electronics, now Department of Information Engineering (DII), at the Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, as an Assistant Professor. His current research interests include statistical integrated circuit design, statistical device modeling and simulation, mixed-signal and RF circuit design, neural networks, stochastic processes, system identification, fuzzy systems, biomedical circuits and systems, and areas of signal processing involving biomedical signals as well as coding, synthesis and automatic recognition of speech.

He serves as a reviewer for a number of international journals and conferences in the fields of electronics, signal processing, and computational intelligence. He served as a Member of the Technical Program Committee for several international conferences. He is an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Computational Intelligence Studies and Editor of the Mathematical Problems in Engineering Journal. He has published more than 80 papers in international journals, edited books, and conference proceedings. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and Member of the AEIT (Associazione Italiana di Elettrotecnica, Elettronica, Automazione, Informatica e Telecomunicazioni).

Claudio Turchetti (male) received the Laurea degree in electronics engineering from the University of Ancona, Ancona, Italy, in 1979. He joined the Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, in 1980, where was the Head of the Department of Electronics, Artificial Intelligence and Telecommunications and is currently a Full Professor of micro-nanoelectronics and design of embedded systems. He published over 140 journal and conference papers, and two books. His current research interests include modeling of silicon devices, simulation of very large scale integration ICs, statistical analysis of submicronmeter ICs, artificial neural networks, RF integrated circuits, computational intelligence, signal processing, pattern recognition, system identification, speech recognition/synthesis and machine learning. Prof. Turchetti has served as a Program Committee Member for several conferences and as a Reviewer of several scientific journals. He is an Expert Consultant of the “Ministero Italiano dell’Università e Ricerca”.