Sorin Cristoloveanu

Biography

A visionary device physics researcher, Sorin Cristoloveanu saw the potential that silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology held for the semiconductor industry in producing competitive microelectronics components with improved performance when others considered it a niche field. As early as 1976, he discovered key mechanisms of thin-body devices that have led to the development of transistors from the simplest (zero gate) to the most complicated (four gates). Among several concepts unveiled by his group, the demonstration during the 1980s that volume inversion occurs in all nano-body devices was revolutionary at the time and helped drive research that led to double-gate transistors and today’s tri-gate FinFET devices. His Pseudo-MOSFET method developed in 1992 has become an industry standard for wafer monitoring without having to actually fabricate devices. More recently, Cristoloveanu’s SOI expertise has led to innovative devices for low-power memory and sharp-switching circuits.

An IEEE Fellow, Cristoloveanu is the director of research at CNRS at IMEP-LAHC, Grenoble, France.