Third Place ARGUS Science Award for Sebastian Ahrens

Sebastian Ahrens was awarded third place in the ARGUS Science Award for his master thesis entitled “Picosecond Pulse Generator with InP-HBT Circuit Design and Development of a Time-Domain Measurement Setup.”

In his thesis, Sebastian Ahrens developed a pulse generator circuit based on InP-HBTs and a corresponding time-domain measurement setup for on-chip characterization. The generation of high-speed electrical pulse signals is crucial in device characterization to meet the growing demands for higher signal bandwidths and data transmission rates. Sebastian Ahrens designed a logic-based pulse generator that reacts to a bandwidth-limited trigger signal at the input with a broadband high-speed pulse signal at the output. Simulations show rise times of 5 ps.

In parallel, Sebastian Ahrens developed a time-domain on-wafer measurement setup because capabilities to characterize such high-speed pulses on-wafer are available only at a few institutions worldwide. The set-up allows to move the measurement equipment very close to the probing needles on a wafer prober, which is essential to achieve minimum distortion of the input and output signals.