Santosh Kurinec received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from University of Delhi. She graduated from high school with an award of National Science Talent Search Scholarship to pursue higher studies in physical sciences. She joined Ramjas College for her BS (Physics Honors) and subsequently joined Miranda House for MS (Physics). Both of these colleges are associated with the University of Delhi. During her five year university education, she attended five summer schools (equivalent to co-op or internship) respectively at- Punjab University, Chandigarh, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Trombay, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay. At these summer schools, she worked on then state-of-the-art techniques that included crystal growth and dislocation analysis, x-ray diffraction, neutron scattering and nuclear magnetic resonance. The opportunities through these summer schools inspired her interest to pursue research in solid state physics. She joined the group of Dr. G.C Jain, Division of Materials, National Physical Laboratory (NPL), New Delhi for doctoral degree.
Dr. G.C Jain’s group was involved in the development of high permeability ferrites for Indian electronic industry. High silica contamination in iron oxide yielded inferior magnetic properties. Santosh undertook a systematic study to understand the role of silica in determining the initial permeability, loss factors, disaccommodation factor and resistivity of Mn-Zn ferrites. Her studies revealed how silica content affected the ferrite microstructure and domain wall movements subsequently explaining the effect of other similar oxides (GeO2 and SnO2). Extensive materials syntheses and characterizations were done that included complete ceramic process with controlled ambient sintering and SEM, EDAX, Auger, and XRD analyses. Her thesis work showed that small amount of SiO2 in fact was beneficial in obtaining superior magnetic properties. In another project she synthesized ceramic perovskite lanthanum strontium chromate for high temperature conducting applications. She investigated and explained the dielectric and conducting properties of lanthanum strontium chromites.
After obtaining her doctoral degree in 1980, Santosh joined the photovoltaic group at NPL where she worked on the development of low cost polysilicon solar cells for terrestrial applications. She investigated grain boundary segregation in directionally cast polysilicon and their effect on grain boundary minority carrier recombinations. She with her group developed Ti-Pd-Ag metallization for polysilicon solar cells. She represented on several Photovoltaic Specialists Conferences. She collaborated with Prof. Robert Hill, Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic, UK and with Prof. Bernard Seraphin of Optical Science Center, AZ for promoting photovoltaic energy conversion.
In 1982, she was selected to participate in a six months assignment at University of Florida to study alternative energy technologies, the program funded by USAID. In 1985 she returned to Florida and took post doctoral position with Prof. P.H. Holloway in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, UF, Gainesville. During her post doctorate, she studied instabilities in Ni-Au thin films and operated XPS facility in the UF Major Analytical and Instrumentation Center (MAIC). In 1986, she became Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Florida A&M / Florida State University College of Engineering in Tallahassee. She taught circuits and semiconductor devices courses and researched on light emission from reverse biased diodes. She also participated in the Florida superconductivity initiative and developed buffer layer for yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) on silicon.
In the fall of 1988, she was appointed Associate Professor of Microelectronic Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). She brought her experience of electronic materials to this undergraduate program and inducted new materials in the IC fab that include refractory metals, oxides and nitrides. Her experience on polysilicon solar cells was helpful in developing a thin film polysilicon transistor process that employed grain size enhancement using seed selection by ion channeling (SSIC), proposed by Prof. Reif of MIT. Subsequently, she fabricated Ge implanted polysilicon TFTs with higher hole mobility. She combined multiple TRIM calculations to model ion range and damage following Si, and Ge implantation (SRIM Manual, p.30). At RIT she fabricated the first TFT, MOSFETs with sputtered SiO2 and Ta2O5 gate oxides.
Later, she collaborated with Hughes Aircraft to develop a lithographic method to pattern electrophoretically deposited three-color phosphor screens. This project was extremely successful and resulted in two graduate theses, papers and a patent. Screens with 15 micron pitch were fabricated on quartz substrates. Recently, she has applied electrophoretic deposition technique to deposit high permeability nanoparticles on silicon substrates to develop on chip magnetic components.
Her experience with phosphors steered her to explore low voltage phosphors for on chip field emission devices. She worked with a start up company Advanced Vision Technologies Inc., and identified a new material, tantalum zinc oxide that exhibited blue electroluminescence at lower voltages.
In the year 200, she started to interact with Dr. Paul Berger from University of Delaware, presently at Ohio State University, to integrated resonant interband tunneling diodes with CMOS. In this project she led the department towards the forefront in research. The project has been funded by the NSF and has involved graduate, undergraduate, school teachers and kids.
In March 2001, she became the Department Head of Microelectronic Engineering, RIT. She instituted a new combined BS (Microelectronic Engineering)/MS (Materials Science and Engineering) at RIT. She is a member of the core faculty of RIT’s new Ph.D program in Microsystems Engineering. Currently she is working on building Nanotechnology educational initiatives at RIT. She teaches online graduate courses- Microelectronics I and Nanoscale CMOS for the distance learning Master of Engineering program. She is the recipient of the Texas Instruments Douglas Harvey Award twice. This award is given to faculty on competitive basis for summer research.
At RIT, she has been the instructor for the senior capstone project course for the last nine years, overseeing ~ 180 senior projects that have been published in IEEE format in the department’s annual journal. She has taught course in electromagnetic fields, electronic materials, semiconductor devices, and IC fabrication.
Her research activities are presently in sub-100 nm Si devices and technology, and thin-film materials and devices for integrated Microsystems. She has authored or co-authored over 50 publications and holds a U.S. patent.
Dr. Kurinec is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a Member the Materials Research Society (MRS).