Tze-Chiang Chen

Biography

For over 25 years, Tze-Chiang Chen has driven major innovations in silicon microelectronics technology with contributions spanning across research, development, and product manufacturing. His technical and managerial leadership in understanding and developing advanced bipolar, complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS), and dynamic random access memory (DRAM) technology has played a critical role in placing IBM as one of the leaders of CMOS technology. Technology developed under Dr. Chen’s guidance has impacted mainframe computing systems used worldwide for scientific, banking, and other business applications and has advanced the global semiconductor industry as a whole. During the 1980s, Dr. Chen conducted pioneering work on the polysilicon emitter/single-crystal silicon interface that led to the world’s first double-poly bipolar technology. The successful commercialization of this technology formed the basis of semiconductor devices that were deployed in the IBM S/390 mainframe computers. Beginning in 1999, Dr. Chen helped lead an IBM team that demonstrated the first commercial microprocessor using silicon-on-insulator technology for high-performance logic. He also personally led IBM’s high-k/metal-gate CMOS development, which was one of the biggest changes to silicon microelectronics technology in decades.

Dr. Chen is a strong advocate of international collaboration in technology development. During the 1990s, he led a multinational alliance for advancing trench-capacitor DRAM technology, and his technical contributions led to the announcement of the world’s fastest and smallest 256-Mb DRAM in 1995. His successful multinational development programs became the models for subsequent IBM joint-development projects with semiconductor companies worldwide.

An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Chen is currently an IBM Fellow and Vice President of Science and Technology with IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York.