Ephraim Suhir

Portland State University, USA

Title: Analytical Modeling Enables Explaining Paradoxical Situations in the Behavior and Performance of Electronic and Photonic Materials and Products

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Biography

Ephraim Suhir is on the faculty of the Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA, Technical University, Vienna, Austria and James Cook University, Queensland, Australia. He is also CEO of a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) ERS Co. in Los Altos, CA, USA, is Foreign Full Member (Academician) of the National Academy of Engineering, Ukraine (he was born in that country); Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the Society of Optical Engineers (SPIE), and the International Microelectronics and Packaging Society  (IMAPS);  Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), the Institute of Physics (IoP), UK, and the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE); and Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Ephraim has authored 450+ publications (patents, technical papers, book chapters, books), presented numerous keynote and invited talks worldwide, and received many professional awards, including 1996 Bell Laboratories Distinguished Member of Technical Staff (DMTS) Award (for developing effective methods for predicting the reliability of complex structures used in AT&T and Lucent Technologies products), and 2004 ASME Worcester Read Warner Medal (for outstanding contributions to the permanent literature of engineering and laying the foundation of a new discipline “Structural Analysis of Electronic Systems”). Ephraim is the third “Russian American”, after S. Timoshenko and I. Sikorsky, who received this prestigious award. His most recent awards are 2019 IEEE Electronic Packaging Society (EPS) Field award for seminal contributions to mechanical reliability engineering and modeling of electronic and photonic packages and systems and 2019 Int. Microelectronic Packaging Society’s (IMAPS) Lifetime Achievement award for making exceptional, visible, and sustained impact on the microelectronics packaging industry and technology.

Abstract

Merits, attributes and challenges associated with the application of analytical ("mathematical") predictive modeling in electronics materials science and engineering are addressed, based mostly on the author’s research during the last several decades. The emphasis is on some practically important, yet paradoxical (i.e., intuitively non-obvious), situations/phenomena in electronics and optics materials science and engineering and on the probabilistic design for reliability approach. The general concepts are illustrated by practical numerical examples. It is concluded that analytical modeling should always complement computer simulations in every important design, testing and even manufacturing effort to make a viable design into a reliable product. These two basic modeling tools are based on different assumptions and use different computation techniques, and if the results obtained using these tools are in agreement, then there is a good reason to believe that these results are accurate and trustworthy.