Research Areas
Semiconductor devices, electron devices, device physics, circuit applications, noise in devices, and noise in circuits

Research Description
Prof. Forbes conducts research on noise in electron devices and circuits at OSU. His 1995 publication (L. Forbes, "ON THE THEORY OF 1/f NOISE OF SEMI-INSULATING MATERIALS," IEEE Trans. on Electron Devices, Vol. 42, No. 10, pp. 1866-1869, (Oct. 1995)) describes the l/f noise of semi-insulating materials and is analogous to the Nyquist formula for the white thermal noise or Johnson noise of conductors. More recently a description of Hooge's 30-year old empirical equation has been given by temperature fluctuations and Hooge's parameter is shown to be simply related to the ratio of the total number of conduction electrons and the total number of atoms in the sample. Prof. Forbes is on the program committee and an invited speaker at the 1st International Symposium on Fluctuation and Noise in Santa Fe NM, June 2003.

Applications of Research
Noise theory, device noise models, applications in circuits, phase noise in oscillators and clock jitter.