Advisory Board

Dr. Zhenqiang “Jack” Ma

The MIT Technology Review article Record-Breaking Speed for Flexible Silicon: A new method of making ultrathin transistors could pave the way to flexible and wearable electronics. said

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have made ultrathin silicon transistors that operate more than 50 times faster than previous flexible-silicon devices. The advance could help make possible flexible high-end electronics that would be useful in a variety of applications, from computers to communication.
 
Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma, professor of electrical and computer engineering and lead researcher on the project, is interested in using flexible electronics to redesign large-scale antennas that could be molded in the shape of, say, an airplane. For instance, radar antennas could be made to cover a large area on an airplane, he says, increasing sensitivity and area of coverage.

Zhenqiang “Jack” Ma, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his B.S. degree in applied physics and the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1991, and the M.S. degree in nuclear science and the M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1997, and 2001, respectively. His doctoral research focused on the development of SiGe power heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) for high frequency microwave applications.
 
In June 2001, Jack joined the R&D team of Conexant Systems and later its spin-off Jazz Semiconductor, Newport Beach, CA, where he worked on the development, characterization, and modeling of high-speed SiGe HBTs. In August 2002, he left Jazz to join the faculty of University of Wisconsin-Madison, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
 
His research interests include high-speed flexible electronics and flexible RF, flexible photodetection and imaging, Si/Ge optoelectronics and photonics for high-speed multispectral imaging, high-speed and high-power SiGe and III-HBT/FET device physics and technologies, RF circuits, monolithic microwave and millimeter wave integrated circuits, reliability of devices and circuits, Si and SiGe strained materials and physics, novel heterogeneous integration schemes, and nanoscale devices. He is the author of 100 peer-reviewed technical papers related to his research.
 
His inventions include PIN Diodes for Photodetection and High-Speed, High-Resolution Image Sensing, Method for Double-Sided Processing of Thin Film Transistors, High-Power-Gain, Bipolar Transistor Amplifier, and Solid-State High Frequency High Power Device. Read the full list of his inventions!
 
Jack was the Technical Program Co-Chair of the IEEE Topical Meeting on Silicon Monolithic Integrated Circuits in RF Systems (2006). He currently serves on the Executive Steering Committee for the IEEE Topical Meeting on Silicon Monolithic Integrated Circuits in RF Systems. He is elected Conference Chair of 2008 IEEE Topical Meeting on Silicon Monolithic Integrated Circuits in RF Systems to be held in Orlando, FL.
 
He served as a Technical Reviewer of Elsevier Superlattices and Microstructures, Semiconductor Science and Technology, Electrochemical and Solid-State Letters, Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, IEE Electronics Letters, Electronics, Telecommunications Research Institute Journal, IEEE Microwave, Wireless Components Letters, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, Solid-State Electronics, International Journal of Electronics, IEEE Transactions On Circuits And Systems-II: Express Briefs, IEEE Transactions On Nanotechnology, and IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science.
 
Jack coauthored On the scaling of emitter stripes of SiGe power HBTs, SiGe HBT linearity comparison between CE and CB configurations, High-speed strained-single-crystal-silicon thin-film transistors on flexible polymers, A high power and high gain X-band Si/SiGe/Si heterojunction bipolar transistor, Base region optimization of SiGe HBTs for high-frequency microwave power amplification, and Aluminum metallization for flat-panel displays using ion-beam-assisted physical vapor deposition. Read his full list of publications!
 
He was featured in MIT’s Technology Review magazine for his innovation on Si power devices in 2004 and for flexible electronics innovation in 2006. He was also featured in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology for his strained flexible chips in 2006.