In the memory of Georges Charitat
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| Georges Charitat |
It is with a profound sadness that we acknowledge the passing of Georges Charitat, Research Director at LAAS-CNRS, on April 23rd, 2002, in a traffic accident during a business trip to Romania.
Georges Charitat was born in 1956 in Chambon-Feugeroles (France). He graduated from INSA (Lyon- France) in 1979 in the field of material physics. He joined LAAS-CNRS in 1981 to complete a Ph.D. thesis previously started at LETI (Grenoble, France). He defended his Ph.D. thesis "Oxidation enhanced diffusion of segregated boron dopant at Si/SiO2 interface" in 1982.
In 1984, he joined CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) as a full-time researcher and started working at LAAS-CNRS (Laboratoire d'Analyse et d'Architecture des Systèmes) on high voltage power MOS transistors modelling. In 1990, he received the State Doctorate degree on the modelling and realisation of high voltage planar components. In 1992, his research team was awarded the first "Michel Benech" prize from Midi-Pyrénées Region Council for the "SIPOS high voltage planar components" project. In 1995, he was part of the research team nominated by CNRS and "Nouvel Economiste" newspaper for the national prize of the best industry-university cooperation.
Since 1995, Georges Charitat was the manager of the "Power Integration and Devices" research Group. He was very active in the collaboration with the industry and particularly with Motorola. He contributed to the set-up of a new planar high voltage platform: he developed a simulation tool, BIDIM2 that permits to define high voltage design rules for the use of a distributed resistor based on SIPOS material. This approach allowed reducing by 9 months the introduction of new products and increased Motorola market share from 5% to 30% on the light ballast market. Georges was also pioneering on RESURF technology. Motorola implemented this concept on SMARTMOS platform.
Georges was passionate by education and pedagogy. He was giving lectures for the Master Science degree in the field of IC's technology and power device physics. He also gave tutorials in the same field to the industry (ST Microelectronics and Motorola). Georges has given a remarkable contribution to the development of a number of scientific events dealing with power semiconductors in Central & Eastern Europe, such as MIEL conference in Nis (Yugoslavia), ISPS in Prague (Czech Republic) and CAS in Sinaia (Romania).
He was an active member of the IEEE Electron Devices Society
and committee member of a number of international conferences
organized under the sponsorship of IEEE EDS, such as ISPSD since
1992, EPE, MIXDES,É He was the general chairman of the
ISPSD'2000 organized in Toulouse-France. He has been the advisor
of 12 Ph.D. theses and published 20 journal papers and 75 conference
papers.
Georges Charitat is survived by his wife Claude and three young
daughters Ondine, Viviane and Flore. On behalf of his colleagues
and friends from LAAS-CNRS, and all the power devices and circuit
community, we offer our deepest condolences to them.
Dr. Marise Bafleur
Research Director, CNRS
Toulouse, France