Research Groups

Material Group

Research activities in Electronic-Material Group include

1. Optoelectronic material and device
2. Electroceramics.

The former research consists of solar cell, semi-conductor material and device, organic/ inorganic LED, Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs), high efficiency fluorescent powder, nano- carbon-pipe and Graphene, ect. The later research consists of piezoelectric ceramics, surface acoustic wave (SAW) device, microwave ceramics, multilayer ceramics, high frequency filter, antenna, high-speed circuit module electromagnetic radiation and electromagnetic interference reduction, etc.

It is the feature of Electronic-Material Group that combination of the fields of Electronic and Material can bring interdisciplinary effects. For instance, those who research in electronic-ceramics will learn ceramic process, material science, micro-wave circuit design and practice training; otherwise, those who research in LED will learn the composition of luminescence materials, device, and drive circuit design. Lot of graduation in Electronic-Material Group with the interdisciplinary expertise in semi-conductor, optoelectronic device, electronic ceramics, and high frequency circuit design can mostly engage in related advanced research industry well.

Control Group

Research activities in Control Group include Robot design, biomedical equipment design, visual servoing and motion control, power electronic applications, aerospace engineering and electronic navigation, control theory and computational systems biology. The research projects not only from Ministry of Science and Technology but from the industry-university collaboration always lead the tendency of industry and have fruitful research results. The research topics of Control Groups include

1. Robot design (large size home service robot, small size home security robot, robotic arm, Delta robot, and humanoid
2. Biomedical equipment design (development of a ubiquitous cloud-based health assessment management and promotion system, development of wearable motion capture system, and development of an emotion regulation music player system)
3. visual servoing, motion control, industrial manipulator, and motor drive
4. contactless power transmission technique, DC-AC grid-connected inverter for the renewable energy generation system, microwave power transmission technique for tumor ablation, active power filter, high efficiency driving circuit for LEDs, EMI suppression technique, and piezoelectric transformer
5. Control engineering, aerospace engineering, and electronic navigation
6. Automatic Control, numerical analysis, digital control, state-space self-tuning control, chaotic system control, partial differential system control, and optimal control
7. Automatic Control, numerical analysis, digital control, state-space self-tuning control, chaotic system control, partial differential system control, and optimal control
8. Computational systems biology, computational proteomics, bioinformatics, bio-database construction and bio-web server construction

Power Group

The fields of research in Electric Power Group can be largely divided into three parts: Power System Planning and Operation, Power Electronics Design and Applications, and Electric Machinery and Driving. The professors in the group are also interested in the topics those include smart grid, renewable energy generations, electric vehicles and wireless charging, battery charging system, lighting driving and power IC design. Meanwhile, the artificial intelligence is being included for power system maintenance and control as well as the future power infrastructure development, anticipating increasing the efficiency, stability, and robustness of power grid so as to fulfill the goal of energy-saving and green power. Moreover, Electric Power Group is continuously devoted to cooperating with industry companies, thereby providing a bountiful of advanced green power electronics design and paving a road to satisfy different power industry requirements.

VLSI/CAD Group

The main focus of researches in the VLSI/CAD group is on VLSI circuit designs and tests. According to the trend of SOC (system-on-a-chip), we contribute to the related application system integrations, SIP (Silicon Intellectual Property) licenses, and CAD (Computer-aided Design) tool developments. The research directions cover both the parts of software and hardware. They include: (a) system design methodologies for high-level circuit syntheses, system testing methodology, circuit layout auto-placement and auto-routing methods; (b) Image and Voice signal processing, which can be applied to the fields of smart home electronics, digital TV, Wireless LAN (WLAN), digital communication systems, and medical image processing; and (c) IC designs for variable applications like power management, A/D and D/A converters, low-power systems, advanced memory architectures, RFIC front-ends, green electronics, and bio-medical electronics. In brief, in the researches of our group, the part of “Software” and “firmware” bases is to learn about writing the C-language or any other related program languages (e.g., System-C or Matlab) running in the FPGA modules or the related simulators to solve the problems of the system tests, IC auto-placement and auto-routing, or signal processing. The part of “hardware”base is to learn of those IC design skills for various kinds of applications and their function verifications. The graduate students from our group will usually have good opportunities in continuous advanced study or in personal career. Most of our graduate students have been hired by either famous domestic companies (for examples, Media Tek, TSMC, RichTek, and NovaTek etc.) or famous foreign companies (like, Apple, Qualcomm, and Analog Devices etc.). Many master students are persuiting their Ph.D. program in wordwide top-10 universities, as MIT, Stanford, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, etc..

Instrument, System and Chip Group

The main research field of Instrumentation Systems Group is biomedical engineering, and the main goal of our research is to make people live healthier and happier. As you know, biomedical engineering is a wide topic and is related to many other fields, such as hardware, software, and material. According to the expertise of our faculty, the research directions can be summarized as follows:

• Micro-nanotechnology related gene chip and system, development of instrumentation and system
• Biomedical electronic system, Electromagnetic thermotherapy system, Nondestructive Testing, High-power (kW) wireless power transmission
• Biomedical MEMS system, Biomedical chip
• Flexible panel circuit design, Renewable energy IC design、Biomedical electronic Assistive Device
• Biomedical Instrumentation for Chinese and Western Medicine, Scientific Assistive Device, Cell Model Simulation
• Biomedical IC design, power management IC design,conductance catheter
• Machine learning, data mining, gene regulation, system biology, social web design, apps programming
• Wireless sensing network, integrated RF front-end circuits for biomedical applications, LTCC module, wireless charging, Internet of thing (IoT), flexible implantable antenna, and energy harvesting.
• Implantable bio-signal acquisition system-on-chip (SOC), micro-stimulation SOC, wearable wireless communication SOC

Computer Science and Information Engineering Group

The core of Computer Science and Information Engineering Group (Former Computer Science and Information Systems Group/Computer and Network Group) mainly covers computer, information, and network system, and the educational goal is to cultivate outstanding people in the information and communication field and make their professional abilities in practice. Research activities in Information and System Group are Computer Architecture and System, Real-Time and Embedded System, Data Compression and Multimedia Communication, Computer vision, graphics, and image processing, Distributed Multimedia Database system & Software Engineering, Parallel and Distributed System, Internet Technology and Applications, Dependable Systems and Networks, Network Systems Design and Analysis, and Cloud Computing and Wireless Networking.

Microelectronics Group

The faculty of the Institute of Microelectronics (IME) includes 12 professors, 1 associate professor, 1 assistant professor and 2 emeritus professors. IME research and education mainly focuse on semiconductor-related fields, covering the world state-of-the-art components of semiconductors, optoelectronics, and nanotechnology, such as RF circuits, thin film solar cells, LED, photo detectors, highly sensitive gas sensors, nanowire sensors, integrated photonic circuits, optical modulator, all-fiber pulsed lasers, all-fiber sensor system, and so on. IME provides fundamental core courses and solid training of theory and experiments with which the graduated M.S. and Ph.D. students could explore their full capability and go further and beyond.

Communication and Network Group

Communication and Network Group in the institute of Computer and Communication Engineering was established in 2002, and the main research fields consist of communication, signal process, information security, optical fiber transmissions, and electric-wave. The direction of research is as below.

• Multimedia compression and processing techniques.
• Image processing and pattern recognition.
• Information security.
• Digital communications and optical fiber transmissions.
• Microwave engineering and high-speed signal propagation.
• EMI/EMC modeling and measurement, bio-electromagnetics.
• Radio wave propagation/ medical engineering.
• Mobile communication system and protocol design.
• Radio resource management for wireless networks.
• Channel estimation and signal detection of wireless communications.

The faculty of Communication and Network Group is the great research team in internal communication and network area. We cooperate with Telecom Technology Center, National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC), companies in the Tainan Science Park, and companies in the Kaohsiung Science Park. We are also responsible for technique research and development, education, and training course through continuously coping with those institutes to provide required inquiry and support.

Nano Group

The fields of research in the Nano-Integrated Circuit Engineering Program of National Cheng Kung University are focused on 1) nanoelectronic device design and technology and 2) sensors. As semiconductor devices continue to shrink, mainly for cost reduction in industry, many issues have continuously surfaced. Besides manufacturing challenges, ever increasing transistor density and computation have raised the concern on power consumption. To expedite further nanoelectronic development, especially for growing mobile market, low power electronics are on demand, which requires novel devices to fulfill the low power strategy while the performance is not compromised. This Nano-IC Program has developed several novel green electronic devices. Another field of sensors has just been started. We have worked on novel materials including promising 2D materials for photo detectors. Other experiments of nanoelectronic devices for general sensor applications are under progress.