Description:

The Electronics Group of the Department of Engineering of the University of Palermo promotes research, teaching and training activities in the typical fields of Electronics and, in coherence with the declaration of the scientific disciplinary sector (SSD), gathers the technical and scientific skills needed for conceiving, analyzing, designing, realizing, characterizing and testing devices, circuits and systems that represent the basis of modern communication and information technologies. The Group owns a wide range of skills in the field of electronic and optoelectronic devices and circuits and it is strongly interested on system-level applications, with a particular attention towards information processing and transmission, power and industrial electronics; electronics for health, automotive, environment, tourism, cultural heritage, home and aerospace.

The main active research fields are the following:

• Power Electronics and Renewable Energy Sources: components and systems for renewable energy; realization and electro-optical characterization of photovoltaic cells; design and test of power electronics converters and algorithms for renewable energy sources (fuel cells, photovoltaic and eolic generators); modelling of renewable sources; innovative energy conversion systems for consumer, automotive and residential applications; control systems for electric vehicles and kinetic energy recovery system; wireless power transfer; RF energy harvesting for wireless power of remote sensors; multi-input DC-DC power converters for wireless sensor networks, non-linear modeling of power converters; modeling of high-frequency electric phenomena (EMI) in power converters; modeling and measuring of non-ideality parameters of reactive components in power converters; characterization of active devices in Si, SiC and GaN technologies.
• Microwave Electronics: modeling, design and simulation of microwave devices and circuits via dedicated tools (AWR Design Environment and Comsol) and their characterization, in terms of scattering parameters (up to 50 GHz) and noise parameters (up to 26 GHz); design, analysis and simulation of microwave power amplifiers via dedicated software (CST and MAGIC); design and simulation of antennas (up to W band) using dedicated software (CST and MAGIC).
• THz Technology: generation and detection of THz radiation through a THz Time Domain Spectroscopy (THz-TDS) setup, based on photoconductive antennas and nonlinear crystals; design and characterization of THz components, such as waveguide-based THz spectral filters; design and analysis of nanoantennas, nanoarrays, and nanorectennas for energy harvesting applications.
• Photonics, Optoelectronics and Integrated Optics: design and characterization of optoelectronic devices and sensors for industrial, biomedical and telecommunications applications; thin-film and nanostructured optoelectronic devices; LEDs and microLEDs for home lightning and display; fabrication and characterization of devices based on organic semiconductors such as olygomers and polymers, e.g. organic LEDs (OLEDs) and organic solar cells; implementation and use of numerical methods (such as beam-propagation method) for guided-wave structures;
• Nanoelectronics: design, fabrication and characterization of memristors, for both non-volatile memory devices (Resistive Random Access Memory - RRAM), and for neuromorphic applications.

List of main research projects:

• REACTION - first and euRopEAn siC eigTh Inches pilOt liNe - http://www.reaction-ecsel.eu/
• PROSIB - PROpulsione e Sistemi IBridi per velivoli ad ala fissa e rotante
• ADAS+ - Sviluppo di tecnologie e sistemi avanzati per la sicurezza dell'auto mediante piattaforme ADAS

Keywords: ING-INF/01; Electronics Engineering, research activity.