Applied Materials Italia (AMat) is a private company located in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and is a subsidiary of Applied Materials, a global company with a broad set of capabilities in material engineering that provides manufacturing equipment, services and software to the global semiconductor, display, solar photovoltaic and related industries. AMat has a long experience in the fields of semiconductor device physics, modeling and reliability. The company focuses on research and development in the field of electronics and micro/nano-electronics, aimed to the development of simulation models for charge and atoms transport and for the degradation of dielectric materials used in the micro/nano-electronics industry.
A flagship product is GinestraTM, a unique commercial device simulation software tool dedicated to the interpretation of electrical characterization measurements (I-V, C-V, G-V, charge pumping, gate/drain noise, bias temperature Instabilities, electrical stresses) and to the reliability assessment of semiconductor devices with a focus on dielectric materials and interfaces. GinestraTM software allows describing at the microscopic level the operations of RRAM devices starting from the creation of a conductive (Hf-rich) filament occurring during the forming processes. The model describes the charge transport, including tunneling and defect-assisted mechanisms. The power dissipation and temperature increase associated with the current are included, and the temperature-field induced generation, recombination and drift/diffusion of atomic species (Oxygen or metal ions, O vacancies, etc.) are described statistically through a kinetic Monte Carlo approach.
AMat's expertise in simulations of emerging electron devices is ideal to connect ab-initio material modeling including a rigorous theoretical treatment of quantum effects to the electrical performances of qubits devices relying on coupled quantum dots. AMat is pioneering a novel multiscale simulation approach connecting material properties including defects (crucial in nm devices as those targeted in the proposal) to electrical device behavior, which already includes quantum effects such as tunneling and charge quantization, and accounts for electron-phonon coupling.
Key people
Andrea Padovani Senior Manager Application Engineer
Applied Materials Italy
Dr. Andrea Padovani is a Senior Manager of Application Engineer in Applied Materials Italia. He received the Ph.D. from the University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy, in 2009, with a thesis entitled “Modeling and Reliability of Innovative Flash Memories”. He has been a post-doc (2009-2010) and a fixed-term Assistant Professor (2011-2013) at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. His research activity focuses on the electrical characterization, physical modeling and reliability of solid-state non-volatile memory (NVM) devices and logic transistors. He authored and co-authored more than 115 technical papers published on international journals and presented at international conferences. He has more than 1030 citations and a h–index of 16. He is a member of the technical committees of the International Symposium on VLSI Technology, Systems and Applications (since 2012) and of the European Symposium on Reliability of Electron Devices, Failure Physics and Analysis, ESREF (since 2015). He also served as committee member of IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium (2013-2015), and IEEE International Integrated Reliability Workshop (2012-2015).
Role in IQubits: Principal Investigator of AMAT. Modelling and atomistic simulations.
Luca Vandelli Software Development Manager
Applied Materials Italy
Dr. Luca Vandelli is a Software Development Manager at Applied Materials Italia. He received the Ph.D. from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy, in 2013. His research interests focus on modeling and characterization of electrical transport and reliability of thin gate oxides in nonvolatile memory devices and MOS transistors. He authored and co-authored more than 40 technical papers published on international journals and presented at international conferences. He has more than 560 citations and a h–index of 10.
Role in IQubits: AMAT Ginestra simulation software development.
Matteo Bina Application Engineer
Applied Materials Italy
Dr. Matteo Bina is an Application Engineer in Applied Materials Italia. He received the Ph.D. at the University of Milano, Italy, in 2010, with a thesis entitled “Open Quantum Systems Dynamics within and beyond the Jaynes-Cummings Model”. He has been a post-doc at Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, Como (2011-2012), and at Università degli Studi di Milano (2013-2019). His area of expertise covers theoretical Quantum Information and Quantum Optics, with several physical implementations, ranging from cavity- and circuit-QED, to solid-state systems. He is author of more than 30 peer-reviewed papers focused on the modelling of entanglement transfer, quantum metrology and sensing systems, characterization of open quantum system dynamics. He scores around 300 citations and a h–index of 9.
Role in IQubits: Development of compact modelling and atomistic simulations.