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Simon Sze

Dr. Simon M. Sze received his B. S. degree from the National Taiwan University in 1957, M. S. degree from the University of Washington in 1960, and Ph. D. from Stanford University in 1963, all in Electrical Engineering.

From 1963 to 1989 he was with Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J. In 1990 he joined the faculty of Electronic Engineering Department, National Chiao Tung University (NCTU). At present, he is UMC Chair Professor, NCTU, and President, National Nano Device Laboratories. Since 1967, he has given lecturers or served as a Visiting Professor to many academic institutions including the University of Cambridge, the University of Delft, Hong Kong University, the University of Peking, Stanford University, and the University of Tokyo.

Dr. Sze has made fundamental contributions to both device physics and technology that have shaped the understanding and advancement of the microelectronic industry. He provided the basic understanding of the temperature dependence of avalanche breakdown phenomena, the transport processes in metal-semiconductor contacts, the operational principles of microwave and photonic devices (e.g., IMPATT, BARITT, and avalanche photodiode), the insulating properties of silicon nitride and silicon dioxide, and the subthreshold characteristics of MOSFET.

Of particular importance is his invention of the nonvolatile semiconductor memory (NVSM) with Dr. D. Kahng in 1967. The invention introduced the floating-gate concept for charge storage and nonlinear transport process for programming and erasing. Today, NVSM is one of the the largest groups in microelectronics products for embedded-memory and mass-storage applications. An important example is the cellular phone which uses NVSM for code storage and data processing of the operating systems. In 2002, there are over 1 billion cellular phones in service, by the year 2010, 70% of the telephone in the world will be the cellular type.

Dr. Sze was the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Electron Device Letters from 1986 to 1990. He has authored or co-authored over 200 articles. He has written 5 books, edited 8 books, and contributed to 12 books. His book Physics of Semiconductor Devices (Wiley, 1969, 2nd Ed, 1981) has been translated into 6 languages, adopted by thousands of universities around the globe, and used by industrial and research institutions. The book is the most cited work in contemporary engineering and applied science publications (over 13,000 citations from ISI Press, Philadelphia).

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