□ DGIST President, Kunwoo Lee, announced that Lee Hyun-Joon, Principal Researcher in the Semiconductor AX Research Division (Nano Technology Research Department, with a joint appointment at the Next-Generation Sensor and Semiconductor Research Institute), received the Minister of Science and ICT Commendation at the 2026 World IT Show—Korea’s largest ICT exhibition—in recognition of his contributions to technology commercialization.
□ Lee Hyun-Joon was recognized for co-developing—together with Nanoscope Systems—an advanced analytical technology capable of precisely observing the heat generated within semiconductor microstructures, and for successfully commercializing it as a practical system.
□ In recent years, heat generation has emerged as a key challenge in semiconductor devices as processing speeds and integration densities increase. However, conventional infrared (IR) cameras are limited in their ability to precisely measure heat generated in microscopic regions at or below the micrometer (μm) scale.
□ To overcome this limitation, the research team adopted a thermoreflectance-based technique that measures temperature by detecting changes in reflectivity within the visible light spectrum. Building on the outcomes of an initial technology transfer from the Korea Basic Science Institute (KBSI), DGIST has worked in close collaboration with Nanoscope Systems for nearly a decade to advance the technology.
□ The team has now succeeded in developing a domestically produced system capable of real-time, high-resolution thermal imaging, overcoming the limitations of existing technologies. This marks the second such system commercialized globally, following the United States, and the only commercially available system of its kind in South Korea. The development is widely regarded as having significantly contributed to strengthening technological self-reliance and national industrial competitiveness in the field of semiconductor analysis.
□ Lee Hyun-Joon, Principal Researcher at DGIST, stated, “We have developed a technology that enables the direct visualization of micro-heating locations and heat propagation process inside semiconductors, which were previously unobservable.” He added, “This achievement presents a new analytical tool that can be widely applied not only in current semiconductor research but also in next-generation advanced device research.”
□ Meanwhile, the DGIST research team is actively accelerating follow-up research to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) with the newly developed thermal observation technology. Through AI-based data analysis, the team aims to precisely visualize even faint thermal signals that were previously difficult to detect, and plans to expand its applications across a wide range of industrial fields, including semiconductor reliability analysis, failure prediction, and process optimization.
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