The sub-discipline of Electronic Circuit and System was authorized to confer master’s degrees and PhD degrees respectively in 1983 and 1998, with the discipline it belongs to owning a post-doctoral research center. The post of “Cheung Kong Scholar” Distinguished Professors of the Ministry of Education was established in 2000. The discipline of Electronic Circuit and System owns the Southeast University Radio Frequency and Photoelectricity Integrated Circuits Research Institute, Nanjing Radio Frequency and Photoelectricity Integrated Circuits Engineering Technology Center, Jiangsu Radio Frequency and Photoelectricity Integrated Circuits Engineering Center, as well as Radio Frequency and Photoelectricity Integrated Circuits Engineering Center of the Ministry of Education. With development in Project 211 and Project 985 construction, the Discipline has reached the nationally advanced level and exerted some influence internationally in terms of its research on radio frequency, hypervelocity, photoelectricity and biological integrated circuits.
At present, Professor Wang Zhigong acts as director of the Discipline. As an expert returning to China supported by the State Council, he is also a “Cheung Kong Scholar” Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education and winner of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (NSFDYS). Now the Discipline boasts a 25-member backbone team for teaching and research (18 with doctoral degrees and 15 with overseas experience), including 3 “Cheung Kong Scholar” Distinguished Professors of the Ministry of Education and 11 professors. The team was selected into the “Development Plan of Cheung Kong Scholars and Innovation Teams” of the Ministry of Education in 2005.
In terms of scientific research, the Discipline’s main tasks cover the following two aspects: cultivating high-tech professionals in the field of micro-electronics and photo-electronics, as well as conducting national and provincial research projects as well as horizontal R&D research subjects.
In terms of talent cultivation, over the past decade, the Discipline has published 3 monographs, 6 translations and 14 textbooks, with a circulation of hundreds of thousands of volumes. Furthermore, it has produced over 300 undergraduates over 350 masters, nearly 50 doctors and 7 post-doctors.
Currently, the Discipline mainly covers the four research orientations as follows: the electronic circuit and system theory, the electronic circuit and system CAD, the radio frequency, hypervelocity and photoelectricity integrated circuits design technology, as well as the biological integrated circuits.
The Discipline has created both software and hardware environment for radio frequency, hypervelocity and photoelectricity integrated circuits design, opened up dozens of manufacturing consignment channels for the MPW mode of radio frequency, hypervelocity and photoelectricity integrated circuits, and built the device model, cell library and process design external member for multiple integrated circuits processes. In addition, it has created a test environment with complete functions for radio frequency, hypervelocity and photoelectricity integrated circuits, conducted research on the packaging techniques for radio frequency, hypervelocity and photoelectricity chips, and set up a production-line-absent design platform for radio frequency, hypervelocity and photoelectricity integrated circuits. All those have laid the foundation for the large-scale research on radio frequency, hypervelocity and photoelectricity chips nationwide.
Through the production-line-absent design platform, the Discipline has assumed and completed over 40 major scientific research projects at national, ministerial and provincial levels, including 8 projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and 25 research subjects in Program 863, as well as over 30 projects in collaboration with enterprises. The accumulated research funds have exceeded 60 million RMB.
The Discipline has successfully taped out nearly 100 batches of radio frequency, hypervelocity and photoelectricity chips, with the accumulated area of chips exceeding 1000 mm2; it has designed successively more than 1000 kinds of integrated circuits with the various techniques of CMOS, BiCMOS, GaAs and Inp, which have been put into processing in batches at home and abroad and succeeded in testing. Of those chips, 33 kinds passed the achievement authentication organized by Jiangsu Technology Department respectively in 2002 and 2005, 10 have been identified by the expert panel as leading worldwide, 18 have reached the internationally advanced level, 3 have been in the lead nationally, and 2 have reached the nationally advanced level. 13 kinds of integrated circuits for fiber-optic communication have obtained a transfer value of 5.6 million RMB.
In collaboration with the National Bioelectronics Laboratory and China Rehabilitation Research Center, the Discipline achieved the mutual inductance and interaction of two toads thousands of miles apart by taking advantage of the micro-electronic nerve bridge and 3G wireless Internet transmission technology, thus realizing the long-distance transmission and representation of neural signals. Recently, it has realized the clinical experiment in which healthy limbs help paralyzed ones coordinate actions by means of communication. The experiment is the first of its kind worldwide.
