Ghavam Shahidi

Biography

Ghavam G. Shahidi has been a key figure in making silicon-on-insulator (SOI) complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology a manufacturable reality and enabling the continued miniaturization of microelectronics. In the early 90s, Dr. Shahidi demonstrated results with a novel technique of combining silicon epitaxial overgrowth and chemical mechanical polishing to prepare device-quality SOI material for fabricating devices and simple circuits. This led IBM to expand its research program to include SOI substrates. Dr. Shahidi also compared SOI CMOS with traditional bulk CMOS and was the first to show the power-delay advantage provided by SOI technology in microprocessor applications. He also contributed to overcoming the barriers to industry adoption and was instrumental in driving SOI substrate development to quality and cost levels suitable for volume manufacturing. An IEEE Fellow and IBM Fellow, Dr. Shahidi is currently the director of Silicon Technology at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.