Gi-ryun Hong, a PhD student in the POSTECH Department of Electrical Engineering advised by Professor Rock-Hyun Baek, received an IEEE Outstanding Paper Award for research presented at the 2025 symposium of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers (IEIE). Organized by the IEIE Daejeon–Chungnam Chapter, this major academic event shares the latest semiconductor and electronics research and recognizes researchers’ academic contributions through awards for outstanding work.

Hong presented “Optimized Ru Word-Line Architecture with Low Resistivity and Low Work-Function Variation for PLC 3D NAND,” proposing a barrierless ruthenium word line to overcome the scaling and reliability limitations of conventional word lines.

The award recognizes a new direction in word-line design that can address both reliability and performance limitations in high-density 3D NAND memory. The work is expected to contribute significantly to next-generation NAND flash memory processes and materials.

February 2026