Sangwook Lee, a Ph.D. student at POSTECH’s Department of Electrical Engineering (advisor: Prof. Rokhyeon Baek), won the Best Paper Award at the 2024 Fall Conference of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers (KIEE) for his paper titled “2nm Node Nanosheet Field-Effect Transistor with Patterned Dielectric Isolation Walls for Ultra-High Performance and Integration.” He received a prize of 1 million KRW.

The paper presents a novel device structure that introduces patterned dielectric walls between devices, enabling a significant reduction in the length of areas that were previously impossible to scale in traditional logic devices. The optimization of the dielectric wall structure in the proposed device improved key semiconductor characteristics such as power, performance, and area (PPA).

The KIEE Fall Conference 2024, which covers seven areas—semiconductors, communications, computers, AI signal processing, systems and control, industrial electronics, and new emerging areas—featured around 360 papers and lectures. The Best Paper Award was presented to the student whose paper received high evaluation and scores from the conference. The award ceremony took place at the 2024 Fall Conference, held at High1 Resort on November 22, 2024.