Bio


Professor Srabanti Chowdhury, affiliated with the Electrical Engineering department and (by courtesy) Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University, specializes in the wideband gap (WBG) and ultra-wide bandgap (UWBG) materials and device engineering. Her research focuses on energy-efficient system architecture for power and RF applications, particularly emphasizing thermal management. She earned her M.S. in June 2008 and Ph.D. in December 2010 in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. In recognition of her outstanding work on diamond integration with GaN and SiC, resulting in very low thermal boundary resistances for thermal management, Prof. Chowdhury received the 2023 Technical Excellence Award from the Semiconductor Research Society (SRC).
Her achievements also include the 2020 Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in Physics and the 2016 Young Scientist Award at the International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors (ISCS). Earlier in her career, she was honored with the DARPA Young Faculty Award, NSF CAREER Award, and AFOSR Young Investigator Program (YIP), all in 2015.
Prof. Chowdhury's significant contributions to the field encompass 6 book chapters, 120 journal papers, 150 conference presentations, and 26 issued patents. Actively engaged in IEEE conference committees, including IRPS and VLSI Symposium, she serves on the executive committee of IEDM. Since 2021, she has been a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford. Notably, she became an IEEE fellow in the batch of 2024 for her contributions to wide bandgap semiconductor devices and technology.

Academic Appointments


Honors & Awards


  • IEEE Fellow, (Class of 2024), IEEE (2023)
  • Advisor of the recipient of Lighting Talk Winner (Department of Energy, EFRC), Department of Energy/ EFRC (2023)
  • Advisor of the recipient of the Best Paper Award (TECHCON 2023), SRC/TECHCON (2023)
  • Technical Excellence Award, Semiconductor Research Corporation (2023)
  • Advisor of the recipient of the Best Paper Award (TECHCON 2023), TECHCON (SRC) (2022)
  • Sloan Research Fellow in Physics, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2020)
  • Gabilan Fellow, Stanford University (2019)
  • NAE Frontier of Engineering (symposium invitee and alumni), National Academy of Engineering (2019)
  • William George and Ida Mary Hoover Faculty Fellow, Stanford University (2019)
  • Advisor of student (Dong Ji) receiving Anil Kr. Jain award for best dissertation, Electrical and Computer Engineering, UC Davis (2018)
  • IEEE Senior Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) (2017)
  • Advisor of student (Dong Ji) receiving Outstanding Student Abroad Award, Chinese Government (2016)
  • Young Scientist Award, International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors (ISCS) (2016)
  • Fulton Faculty Development Chair for outstanding research, Arizona State University (2015)
  • NSF CAREER Award, National Foundation of Science (2015)
  • Young Faculty Award (YFA), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (2015)
  • Young Investigator Program Award, Air Force Office of Research (2015)

Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations


  • Executive Committee Member, IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) (2018 - Present)
  • Program Co-Chair, Topical Workshop on Heterostructure Microelectronics (TWHM) (2018 - Present)
  • Program Committee Member, ISPlasma/IC-PLANTS (2018 - Present)
  • Subcommittee vice chair : High power electron devices, Compound Semiconductor Week 2019 (2018 - Present)
  • Subcommittee Chair for Power Devices / Compound Semiconductor and High Speed Devices Committee, IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) (2017 - 2018)
  • Subcommittee Member for Power Devices / Compound Semiconductor and High Speed Devices Committee, IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) (2015 - 2017)

Program Affiliations


  • Stanford SystemX Alliance

Current Research and Scholarly Interests


Wide bandap materials & devices for RF, Power and energy efficient electronics

Stanford Advisees


All Publications


  • Development of 300-400 °C grown diamond for semiconductor devices thermal management MRS ADVANCES Malakoutian, M., Soman, R., Woo, K., Chowdhury, S. 2023
  • Growth and mobility characterization of N-polar AlGaN channel high electron mobility transistors APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS Noshin, M., Wen, X., Soman, R., Xu, X., Chowdhury, S. 2023; 123 (6)

    View details for DOI 10.1063/5.0140777

    View details for Web of Science ID 001044510200007

  • Overview of Wide/Ultrawide Bandgap Power Semiconductor Devices for Distributed Energy Resources IEEE JOURNAL OF EMERGING AND SELECTED TOPICS IN POWER ELECTRONICS Mazumder, S. K., Voss, L. F., Dowling, K. M., Conway, A., Hall, D., Kaplar, R. J., Pickrell, G. W., Flicker, J., Binder, A. T., Chowdhury, S., Veliadis, V., Luo, F., Khalil, S., Aichinger, T., Bahl, S. R., Meneghini, M., Charles, A. B. 2023; 11 (4): 3957-3982
  • Demonstration of N-Polar All-AlGaN High Electron Mobility Transistors With 375 mA/mm Drive Current IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS Noshin, M., Soman, R., Chowdhury, S. 2023; 44 (7): 1072-1075
  • Scaling Study on High-Current Density Low-Dispersion GaN Vertical FinFETs IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS Jeong, S., Lee, K., Chun, J., Soman, R., Chowdhury, S. 2023; 44 (5): 841-844
  • High Current Density Trench CAVET on Bulk GaN Substrates with Low-Temperature GaN Suppressing Mg Diffusion CRYSTALS Wen, X., Lee, K., Nakazato, Y., Chun, J., Chowdhury, S. 2023; 13 (4)
  • Linearity Performance of Derivative Superposition in GaN HEMTs: A Device-to-Circuit Perspective IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES Martinez, R., Munzer, D. J., Shankar, B., Murmann, B., Chowdhury, S. 2023
  • On the Scope of GaN-Based Avalanche Photodiodes for Various Ultraviolet-Based Applications FRONTIERS IN MATERIALS Ji, D., Chowdhury, S. 2022; 9
  • A discussion on various experimental methods of impact ionization coefficient measurement in GaN AIP ADVANCES Ji, D., Zeng, K., Bian, Z., Shankar, B., Gunning, B. P., Binder, A., Dickerson, J. R., Aktas, O., Anderson, T. J., Kaplar, R. J., Chowdhury, S. 2022; 12 (3)

    View details for DOI 10.1063/5.0083111

    View details for Web of Science ID 000772898200002

  • Record-Low Thermal Boundary Resistance between Diamond and GaN-on-SiC for Enabling Radiofrequency Device Cooling. ACS applied materials & interfaces Malakoutian, M., Field, D. E., Hines, N. J., Pasayat, S., Graham, S., Kuball, M., Chowdhury, S. 2021

    Abstract

    The implementation of 5G-and-beyond networks requires faster, high-performance, and power-efficient semiconductor devices, which are only possible with materials that can support higher frequencies. Gallium nitride (GaN) power amplifiers are essential for 5G-and-beyond technologies since they provide the desired combination of high frequency and high power. These applications along with terrestrial hub and backhaul communications at high power output can present severe heat removal challenges. The cooling of GaN devices with diamond as the heat spreader has gained significant momentum since device self-heating limits GaN's performance. However, one of the significant challenges in integrating polycrystalline diamond on GaN devices is maintaining the device performance while achieving a low diamond/GaN channel thermal boundary resistance. In this study, we achieved a record-low thermal boundary resistance of around 3.1 ± 0.7 m2 K/GW at the diamond/Si3N4/GaN interface, which is the closest to theoretical prediction to date. The diamond was integrated within 1 nm of the GaN channel layer without degrading the channel's electrical behavior. Furthermore, we successfully minimized the residual stress in the diamond layer, enabling more isotropic polycrystalline diamond growth on GaN with thicknesses >2 mum and a 1.9 mum lateral grain size. More isotropic grains can spread the heat in both vertical and lateral directions efficiently. Using transient thermoreflectance, the thermal conductivity of the grains was measured to be 638 ± 48 W/m K, which when combined with the record-low thermal boundary resistance makes it a leading-edge achievement.

    View details for DOI 10.1021/acsami.1c13833

    View details for PubMedID 34875169

  • Demonstration of Monolithic Polycrystalline Diamond-GaN Complementary FET Technology for High-Temperature Applications ACS APPLIED ELECTRONIC MATERIALS Ren, C., Malakoutian, M., Li, S., Ercan, B., Chowdhury, S. 2021; 3 (10): 4418-4423
  • A perspective on the electro-thermal co-design of ultra-wide bandgap lateral devices APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS Choi, S., Graham, S., Chowdhury, S., Heller, E. R., Tadjer, M. J., Moreno, G., Narumanchi, S. 2021; 119 (17)

    View details for DOI 10.1063/5.0056271

    View details for Web of Science ID 000715601800001

  • Oxidation Behavior of InAlN during Rapid Thermal Annealing PHYSICA STATUS SOLIDI A-APPLICATIONS AND MATERIALS SCIENCE Thron, A. M., Gao, J., Ercan, B., Laurent, M. A., Chowdhury, S., van Benthem, K. 2021
  • Diamond-Incorporated Flip-Chip Integration for Thermal Management of GaN and Ultra-Wide Bandgap RF Power Amplifiers IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPONENTS PACKAGING AND MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY Shoemaker, D., Malakoutian, M., Chatterjee, B., Song, Y., Kim, S., Foley, B. M., Graham, S., Nordquist, C. D., Chowdhury, S., Choi, S. 2021; 11 (8): 1177-1186
  • Vertical GaN Power Devices: Device Principles and Fabrication Technologies-Part I IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES Fu, H., Fu, K., Chowdhury, S., Palacios, T., Zhao, Y. 2021; 68 (7): 3200-3211
  • Vertical GaN Power Devices: Device Principles and Fabrication Technologies-Part II IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES Fu, H., Fu, K., Chowdhury, S., Palacios, T., Zhao, Y. 2021; 68 (7): 3212-3222
  • Development of Polycrystalline Diamond Compatible with the Latest N-Polar GaN mm-Wave Technology CRYSTAL GROWTH & DESIGN Malakoutian, M., Ren, C., Woo, K., Li, H., Chowdhury, S. 2021; 21 (5): 2624-2632
  • Polycrystalline diamond growth on beta-Ga2O3 for thermal management APPLIED PHYSICS EXPRESS Malakoutian, M., Song, Y., Yuan, C., Ren, C., Lundh, J., Lavelle, R. M., Brown, J. E., Snyder, D. W., Graham, S., Choi, S., Chowdhury, S. 2021; 14 (5)
  • Electro-Thermal Investigation of GaN Vertical Trench MOSFETs IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS Chatterjee, B., Ji, D., Agarwal, A., Chan, S. H., Chowdhury, S., Choi, S. 2021; 42 (5): 723-726
  • On impact ionization and avalanche in gallium nitride APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS Ji, D., Chowdhury, S. 2020; 117 (25)

    View details for DOI 10.1063/5.0031504

    View details for Web of Science ID 000603064200007

  • Designing Beveled Edge Termination in GaN Vertical p-i-n Diode-Bevel Angle, Doping, and Passivation IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES Zeng, K., Chowdhury, S. 2020; 67 (6): 2457–62
  • 60 A/W high voltage GaN avalanche photodiode demonstrating robust avalanche and high gain up to 525K APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS Ji, D., Ercan, B., Benson, G., Newaz, A. M., Chowdhury, S. 2020; 116 (21)

    View details for DOI 10.1063/1.5140005

    View details for Web of Science ID 000537750600001

  • Design and Fabrication of Ion-Implanted Moat Etch Termination Resulting in 0.7 m $\Omega\cdot$ cm(2)/1500 V GaN Diodes IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS Ji, D., Li, S., Ercan, B., Ren, C., Chowdhury, S. 2020; 41 (2): 264–67
  • Experimental Determination of Velocity-Field Characteristic of Holes in GaN IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS Ji, D., Ercan, B., Chowdhury, S. 2020; 41 (1): 23–25
  • A Study on the First-Derivative Output Properties of GaN Static Induction Transistor with Submicrometer Fin Width PHYSICA STATUS SOLIDI B-BASIC SOLID STATE PHYSICS Chun, J., Li, S., Malakoutian, M., Ji, D., Chowdhury, S. 2019
  • A Study on the Growth Window of Polycrystalline Diamond on Si3N4-coated N-Polar GaN CRYSTALS Malakoutian, M., Laurent, M. A., Chowdhury, S. 2019; 9 (10)
  • Experimental determination of impact ionization coefficients of electrons and holes in gallium nitride using homojunction structures APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS Ji, D., Ercan, B., Chowdhury, S. 2019; 115 (7)

    View details for DOI 10.1063/1.5099245

    View details for Web of Science ID 000481469900011

  • A Demonstration of Nitrogen Polar Gallium Nitride Current Aperture Vertical Electron Transistor IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS Rajabi, S., Mandal, S., Ercan, B., Li, H., Laurent, M. A., Keller, S., Chowdhury, S. 2019; 40 (6): 885–88
  • Compound Semiconductors PHYSICA STATUS SOLIDI A-APPLICATIONS AND MATERIALS SCIENCE Xing, G., Mi, Z., Chowdhury, S. 2023; 220 (8)
  • Impact of Diamond Passivation on f(T) and f(max) of mm-wave N-Polar GaN HEMTs IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES Zhou, X., Malakoutian, M., Soman, R., Bian, Z., Martinez, R., Chowdhury, S. 2022
  • Low Thermal Budget Growth of Near-Isotropic Diamond Grains for Heat Spreading in Semiconductor Devices ADVANCED FUNCTIONAL MATERIALS Malakoutian, M., Zheng, X., Woo, K., Soman, R., Kasperovich, A., Pomeroy, J., Kuball, M., Chowdhury, S. 2022
  • Nanoporous GaN on p-type GaN: A Mg out-diffusion compensation layer for heavily Mg-doped p-type GaN. Nanotechnology Lee, K. J., Nakazato, Y., Chun, J., Wen, X., Meng, C., Soman, R., Noshin, M., Chowdhury, S. 2022

    Abstract

    Embeddingp-type gallium nitride (p-GaN) with controlled Mg out-diffusion in adjacent epitaxial layers is a key for designing various multi-junction structures with high precision and enabling more reliable bandgap engineering of III-nitride-based optoelectronics and electronics. Here, we report, for the first time, with experimental evidence how nanoporous GaN (NP GaN) can be introduced as a compensation layer for the Mg out-diffusion fromp-GaN. NP GaN onp-GaN provides an ex-situ-formed interface with oxygen and carbon impurities, compensating Mg out-diffusion fromp-GaN. To corroborate our findings, we used two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) formed at the interface of AlGaN/GaN as the indicator to study the impact of the Mg out-diffusion from underlying layers. Electron concentration evaluated from the capacitance-voltage measurement shows that 9 * 1012cm-2of carriers accumulate in the AlGaN/GaN 2DEG structure grown on NP GaN, which is the almost same number of carriers as that grown with nop-GaN. In contrast, 2DEG onp-GaN without NP GaN presents 9 * 109cm-2of the electron concentration, implying 2DEG structure is depleted by Mg out-diffusion. The results address the efficacy of NP GaN and its' role in successfully embeddingp-GaN in multi-junction structures for various state-of-the-art III-nitride-based devices.

    View details for DOI 10.1088/1361-6528/ac91d7

    View details for PubMedID 36103775

  • Vertical Ga2O3 MOSFET With Magnesium Diffused Current Blocking Layer IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS Zeng, K., Soman, R., Bian, Z., Jeong, S., Chowdhury, S. 2022; 43 (9): 1527-1530
  • A study on MOCVD growth window for high quality N-polar GaN for vertical device applications SEMICONDUCTOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Soman, R., Noshin, M., Chowdhury, S. 2022; 37 (9)
  • A Study on the Impact of Dislocation Density on Leakage Current in Vertical GaN-on-GaN p-n Diodes IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES Li, S., Ercan, B., Ren, C., Ikeda, H., Chowdhury, S. 2022
  • A systematic study of the regrown interface impurities in unintentionally doped Ga-polar c-plane GaN and methods to reduce the same SEMICONDUCTOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Noshin, M., Soman, R., Xu, X., Chowdhury, S. 2022; 37 (7)
  • Current Transient Spectroscopic Study of Vacancy Complexes in Diamond Schottky p-i-n Diode IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES Chaudhuri, S. K., Malakoutian, M., Kleppinger, J. W., Dutta, M., Koeck, F. A., Nemanich, R. J., Chowdhury, S., Mandal, K. C. 2022
  • 2.8 kV Avalanche in Vertical GaN PN Diode Utilizing Field Plate on Hydrogen Passivated P-Layer IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS Bian, Z., Zeng, K., Chowdhury, S. 2022; 43 (4): 596-599
  • A study on sub-bandgap photoexcitation in nitrogen- and boron-doped diamond with interdigitated device structure APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS Woo, K., Malakoutian, M., Reeves, B. A., Chowdhury, S. 2022; 120 (11)

    View details for DOI 10.1063/5.0083710

    View details for Web of Science ID 000827449100002

  • Study of Avalanche Behavior in 3 kV GaN Vertical P-N Diode under UIS Stress for Edge-termination Optimization Shankar, B., Bian, Z., Zeng, K., Meng, C., Martinez, R., Chowdhury, S., Gunning, B., Flicker, J., Binder, A., Dickerson, J., Kaplar, R., IEEE IEEE. 2022
  • Study of Avalanche Behavior in 3 kV GaN Vertical P-N Diode Under UIS Stress for Edge-termination Optimization Shankar, B., Bian, Z., Zeng, K., Meng, C., Martinez, R., Chowdhury, S., Gunning, B., Flicker, J., Binder, A., Dickerson, J., Kaplar, R., IEEE IEEE. 2022
  • Diamond Integration on GaN for Channel Temperature Reduction Malakoutian, M., Xu, R., Ren, C., Pasayat, S., Sayed, I., Pop, E., Chowdhury, S., IEEE IEEE. 2021: 70-74
  • Design of Ka-Band Doherty Power Amplifier Using 0.15 mu m GaN on SiC Process Based on Novel Complex Load Modulation Zhou, X., Chowdhury, S., Martinez, R., Shankar, B., IEEE IEEE. 2021: 259-262
  • On-Wafer Investigation of Avalanche Robustness in 1.3 kV GaN-on-GaN P-N Diode Under Unclamped Inductive Switching Stress Shankar, B., Zeng, K., Gunning, B., Lee, K., Martinez, R., Meng, C., Zhou, X., Flicker, J., Binder, A., Dickerson, J., Kaplar, R., Chowdhury, S., IEEE IEEE. 2021: 40-43
  • Best Practices to Quantify Linearity Performance of GaN HEMTs for Power Amplifier Applications Martinez, R., Munzer, D. J., Zhou, X., Shankar, B., Schmidt, E., Wildnauer, K., Wu, B., Murmann, B., Chowdhury, S., IEEE IEEE. 2021: 85-89
  • The Doping Dependence of the Thermal Conductivity of Bulk Gallium Nitride Substrates JOURNAL OF ELECTRONIC PACKAGING Song, Y., Lundh, J., Wang, W., Leach, J. H., Eichfeld, D., Krishnan, A., Perez, C., Ji, D., Borman, T., Ferri, K., Maria, J., Chowdhury, S., Ryou, J., Foley, B. M., Choi, S. 2020; 142 (4)

    View details for DOI 10.1115/1.4047578

    View details for Web of Science ID 000591576500009

  • Analysis of mobility-limiting mechanisms of the two-dimensional hole gas on hydrogen-terminated diamond PHYSICAL REVIEW B Peterson, R., Malakoutian, M., Xu, X., Chapin, C., Chowdhury, S., Senesky, D. G. 2020; 102 (7)