We are pleased to share highlights from our recent Fall Industry Advisory Board (IAB) meeting at the 3D Systems Packaging Research Center (PRC). The meeting brought together industry leaders, renowned faculty from across the College of Engineering, and exceptionally talented graduate students.

Our keynote speakers set the tone for the future: Poulomi Mukherjee from Applied Materials discussed breakthroughs enabling next-generation advanced panel packaging, while Michael Holyoak from Nokia Bell Labs introduced Radio-on-Glass as a high-performance alternative for mmWave packaging.

The technical sessions were equally inspiring, showcasing advances in HPC/AI packaging, RF/mmWave and photonics, and heterogeneous integration. Topics ranged from glass-core fabrication and thermal reliability to 6G antenna arrays, 3D-printed devices, THz imaging, chiplet reconstitution, and UCIe standards—making for a rich and rewarding technical exchange.

I am deeply grateful to the faculty for their exceptional contributions and proud of our students for delivering outstanding presentations and posters. Together, we are helping shape the next era of advanced packaging. Looking ahead, January will be a busy month as we finalize the many excellent papers accepted for the 2026 ECTC and share results with our industry partners in upcoming updates.

We are truly thankful for our partnership with industry members and for the continued support from Georgia Tech leadership, including the Institute of Matter and Systems and the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research.

Happy holidays and best wishes for the new year!

Muhannad Bakir

Spring IAB 2026 — Virtual Format

In response to members feedback, the May 2026 Spring Industry Advisory Board (IAB) meeting will be held in a fully virtual format. This change is designed to minimize scheduling conflicts with other major conferences and symposia typically held in May, while also offering greater flexibility for participants. The virtual format ensures broader engagement and continued collaboration across our community members.

Research Highlight – Journal Paper 1:

Rising power densities in advanced 2.5D and 3D packaging architectures place increasingly stringent demands on thermal interface and encapsulation materials. While hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) offers high intrinsic thermal conductivity and electrical insulation, weak filler–matrix interactions severely limit heat transport in conventional epoxy composites. This work introduces a rapid and scalable dendritic amino surface functionalization strategy that amplifies reactive amino group density on BN platelets while preserving crystallinity. By combining glycine grafting with sequential Aza–Michael addition reactions, a hyperbranched polyacrylate–polyamine layer is constructed on the BN surface, enabling strong covalent bonding with epoxy networks and reduced interfacial thermal resistance. The resulting BN@G21-PA epoxy composites exhibit significantly enhanced thermal conductivity, improved rheological processability, reduced coefficient of thermal expansion, and superior thermo-mechanical reliability. System-level TIM evaluations and multi-physics simulations further demonstrate reduced operating temperature and interfacial stress under realistic power loading, highlighting the strong potential of dendritically engineered BN fillers for next-generation high-density semiconductor packaging applications.

Figure: (a) Schematic illustration of the dendritic amino functionalization process on BN platelets via glycine grafting and sequential Aza–Michael addition reactions. (b) Thermal conductivity enhancement of epoxy composites with BN@G21-PA fillers compared with pristine BN. (c) Shear-rate-dependent viscosity behavior demonstrating preserved processability. (d) Heater temperature under 15 W power input, showing superior cooling performance of BN@G21-PA composites. (e–f) Multiphysics simulation results illustrating reduced temperature and interfacial stress distributions in TIM configurations.

Lin, A. King, J. W. Lim, K. Godbole, K.S. Moon, W.H. Lee, and C.P. Wong, “High-performance boron nitride epoxy composites via dendritic amino surface modification for advanced packaging applications,” Composites Science and Technology, vol. 270, p. 111257, 2025, doi: 10.1016/j.compscitech.2025.111257. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compscitech.2025.111257) 

Research Highlight – Journal Paper 2:

Modern power delivery networks rely on buck-based DC-DC converters, where inductors play a key role in energy storage and continuous current delivery. To meet high conversion ratio requirements for integrated voltage regulators (IVRs), new magnetic materials with low loss and high-frequency stability are essential. This study evaluates FeSi-FeNi soft magnetic composites (SMCs) for small and large signal losses under zero DC and DC bias conditions, correlating results with material properties like filler shape, packing, and resistivity.

Two SMCs (20 wt% FeNi with spherical and flake fillers) outperform industry-grade cores at frequencies above 1 MHz, with flakes offering better high-frequency stability and lower eddy losses, while spheres provide higher saturation energy density and lower hysteresis losses. Thermal analysis shows copper winding joule heating as the main source of heat buildup, emphasizing thermal management needs. Large signal tests reveal hysteresis losses exceed eddy losses by 1.5×, highlighting their importance in IVR core characterization. These findings provide benchmarks for screening inductors for >1 MHz IVR applications.

Figure: (Left) SEM images of (a) FeSi and (b) FeNi powders and (c, d) flaked powders after ball milling. (Middle) Small signal effective AC resistance (Rac) as a function of duty cycle at 20 MHz. (Right) AC magnetization response (BH loops) at 3 MHz for different samples.

S. A. Venkataramanan, C. A. Barros, Y. Narita, D. A. Gilbert, M. Kathaperumal and M. D. Losego, "Low-Loss FeSi–FeNi Inductor Cores for >5–1-V Integrated Voltage Regulators," in IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology, vol. 15, no. 11, pp. 2381-2389, Nov. 2025, doi: 10.1109/TCPMT.2025.3611838. (https://doi.org/10.1109/TCPMT.2025.3611838)

Research Highlight – Journal Paper 3:

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC), driven by applications like ChatGPT, has created unprecedented demand for computing power. Traditional transistor scaling is no longer sufficient, prompting a shift toward heterogeneous integration (HI) -a system-level approach that integrates multiple chiplets (CPUs, GPUs, high-bandwidth memory) into a single package.

HI delivers significant benefits:

Emerging HI technologies, including 3D integration and glass core packaging, are enabling next-generation AI systems capable of training large generative models and supporting real-time inference. Industry leaders have already deployed HI-based architecture to overcome the limitations of monolithic chip designs.

This review highlights the current state, advantages, limitations, and future potential of HI technologies for high-performance AI systems.

Figure: (Left) Landscape overview of current HI technologies. (Right) Table summarizing State-of-the-Art AI Hardware Accelerators

Manley, A. Victor, H. Park, A. Kaul, M. Kathaperumal and M. S. Bakir, "Heterogeneous Integration Technologies for Artificial Intelligence Applications," in IEEE Journal on Exploratory Solid-State Computational Devices and Circuits, vol. 10, pp. 89-97, 2024, doi: 10.1109/JXCDC.2024.3484958. (https://doi.org/10.1109/JXCDC.2024.3484958)

Mark D. Losego is a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech and the College of Engineering Dean’s Education Innovation Professor.  He started at Georgia Tech in 2014 as an assistant professor and has been advising graduate students in the PRC since 2016.  He earned a B.S. at Penn State University, a M.S. and Ph.D. at NC State University, and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois.  Over the past decade, he has advised or co-advised eight PRC students that have primarily done research to address materials integration challenges including work on dielectrics, redistribution layers, and inductors.

Professor Losego is an expert in materials synthesis and processing, particularly in the vapor phase deposition and 

modification of materials and thin films. His research is known for understanding the fundamental thermodynamics and kinetics of materials synthesis processes and using this understanding to control material structure and properties at the atomic level.  Besides his efforts in microelectronics and packaging, Prof. Losego’s materials processing research has also impacted the development of novel membrane materials for chemical separations, advanced textile technologies for sustainable uses, and catalyst structures for chemical synthesis and pollutant degradation.

Professor Losego is also known for starting and continuing to direct the Materials Innovation and Learning Laboratory (the MILL), a student-operated, open-access “make-and-measure” space in the School of Materials Science and Engineering.  The MILL was the first and still one of only a few peer-to-peer student-operated spaces for materials science in the world, providing students with free access to over $1.2M of analytical equipment common to the discipline, including scanning electron microscopes, IR spectrometers, mechanical testing, UV/vis spectroscopy, and much more.  The MILL is currently supported by a volunteer staff of about 120 undergraduate students and each semester over 500 students from across campus access and use its facilities.

For the past decade, Prof. Losego has also served on the programming committee for the Thin Film Division of the American Vacuum Society (AVS), also serving as treasurer and chair for the division.  Currently, he has accepted appointment as the overall Chair for the 72nd AVS International Symposium and Exhibition to be held in Pittsburgh, PA in November 2026.  As chair, he has steered several focus topics towards areas of interest to the PRC community, including a session on materials and processing for Advanced Packaging that includes several PRC alumni on its programming committee.  He encourages all PRC members to consider attending or submitting an abstract to AVS 72 when the submission portal opens in February 2026.

The Mill

Losego Lab

Meghna Narayanan is a Ph.D. candidate in Materials Science and Engineering at the 3D Systems Packaging Research Center (PRC), where she is co-advised by Prof. Mark Losego and Dr. Mohan Kathaperumal. Her research focuses on developing and evaluating liner materials for through-glass vias (TGVs) to address cracking challenges caused by copper adhesion limitations and coefficient-of-thermal-expansion (CTE) mismatch.

Her broader research interests include advanced liner material discovery, reliability assessment of electronic packaging systems, and emerging non-destructive characterization methods for materials and package structures.

Meghna recently presented her work on “Advanced Characterization of Liners for Through Vias in Glass Packages” at the AVS 71st International Symposium & Exhibition.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli (2019), and her master’s degree in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (2023). Meghna joined the PRC in Fall 2023.

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