IEEE Awards Booklet - 2011 - 8

I E E E

M E D A L S

IEEE CORPORATE RECOGNITION

2011 IEEE
Edison Medal

2011 IEEE
Ernst Weber Engineering
Leadership Recognition

Sponsored by Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Sponsored by IEEE

Isamu Akasaki

Tze-Chiang Chen

For seminal and pioneering contributions to the
development of nitride-based semiconductor materials
and optoelectronic devices, including visible wave length
LEDs and lasers

For engineering and managerial leadership in driving the
world's most advanced silicon chip technologies from
research to development to manufacturing

The persistent research efforts of Isamu Akasaki have resulted in
the technology behind today's high-brightness display lighting
and advanced entertainment devices. During the late 1960s, Dr.
Akasaki began researching solutions to the roadblocks that had
prevented realization of high-performance blue LEDs and lasers.
While many abandoned the challenge, his work using gallium
nitride materials paid off in the 1990s with pioneering developments that led to high-brightness blue, green and white LEDs
and high-performance blue-violet semiconductor lasers. His
work has influenced all subsequent developments on these
LEDs and lasers and has enabled devices such as the blue-ray
disc player, white illumination sources and solid-state full-color
displays. His first achievement important to the development of
blue LEDs came in 1985 when he successfully grew high-quality
single-crystal gallium nitride on sapphire substrates using a lowtemperature buffer technology. His second was in 1989 when he
used low-energy electron beam irradiation for p-type doping of
gallium nitride. These achievements made at Nagoya University
were necessary for further development of gallium nitride as the
wide bandgap semiconductor system to enable the new light
source. He then realized the first blue/ultraviolet gallium nitride
LEDs. During the 1990s, Dr. Akasaki demonstrated stimulated
emission in the ultraviolet region with optical excitation from
gallium nitride at room temperature and electrically injected ultraviolet/purple-blue laser diodes. His inventions launched a
new market for optoelectronics devices, and the Akasaki
Institute at Nagoya University was founded in 2006 based on
royalties from his patents. An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Akasaki is a
professor with Meijo University's Graduate School of Science
and Technology and a Distinguished University Professor of
Nagoya University, Japan.

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 highperformance 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.

Scope: For a career of meritorious achievement in electrical
science, electrical engineering or the electrical arts.

Scope: For exceptional managerial leadership in the fields of
interest of IEEE.

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, Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Awards Booklet - 2011