In addition to centralized core facilities and resources, both the School of Engineering and the School of Science create an environment that supports many specialized faculty laboratories researching everything from fundamental materials discovery to systems-level microelectronics. These individual laboratories serve as facets of many productive collaborations.
Contact: Professor Rena Huang
Professor Huang’s research interests lie in the design, fabrication, and characterization of novel optoelectronic devices that are utilized III-V, Si, or 2D materials, that include slow-light photonics, high-contrast gratings for metastructure waveguide and nanophotonic arrays for meta surface applications, and on-chip lightwave circuit integration for optical interconnects, RF photonics, and optical neuromorphic computing applications.
Contact: Professor Ishwara Bhat
Professor Bhat’s research is on the deposition of electronic materials in thin-film form for use in advanced solid-state devices such as infrared (IR) detectors, neutron detectors, and high-power and high-voltage semiconductor power devices. Materials of interest include silicon carbide for high voltage power devices, hexagonal boron nitride for neutron detectors, cadmium telluride, zinc telluride, and related materials for solar cells and IR detectors.
Contact: Professor E. Fred Schubert
The Semiconductor Devices Research Laboratory conducts research on semiconductor materials and devices. Materials research includes, but is not limited to, the doping of semiconductors, the radiative efficiency of light emitting active regions, and the anti-reflective properties of thin-film coatings. Device research includes the characteristics of light emitting and laser diodes, strategies for efficient light extraction, and the efficiency of photovoltaic solar cells. Analysis methods employed include experimental techniques, analytic theoretical techniques, and numerical simulation techniques.
Contact: Professor Mona Hella
The main focus of Dr. Hella’s laboratory is on high-frequency integrated circuits and their applications in various disciplines. This includes software defined radio and/or cognitive radio circuits and systems. They also develop hybrid RF/optical communication systems for mobile area networks, as well as the implementation of 3D circuits for mm-wave smart antenna transceivers.
Contact: Professor Jian Shi
Professor Jian Shi’s laboratory conducts fundamental research on understanding of the roles of photon, carrier momentum, symmetry, and phonon of novel materials on the transport behaviors, spin dynamics and optoelectronic properties, and developing experimental approaches and solutions on searching for new electronic materials and device structures toward energy-efficient, high-performance spin and neuromorphic computing.
Contact: Professor Daniel Gall
Professor Daniel Gall’s research utilizes ultra-high vacuum deposition equipment to create new materials and nanostructures with atomic precision. These are then analyzed for structure, as well as mechanical, electrical, and optical properties. In microelectronic devices, increasing resistivity with decreasing copper wire dimensions has been a challenge. Professor Gall’s group particularly studies electron scattering at surfaces and grain boundaries and develops methods to suppress electron scattering, resulting in highly conductive metal nanowires.
Contact: Professor Ravishankar Sundararaman
Designing materials at the nanoscale is a tremendous challenge for fabrication and characterization while creating unique opportunities for exploiting properties and phenomena that emerge at small scales. Hence, the theoretical prediction of these properties plays a critical role in understanding and engineering nano-material properties. Professor Sundararaman’s group develops computational techniques to predict properties of nanoscale systems starting from atomic-scale electronic-structure calculations using density-functional theory, accounting for the interactions of electrons, photons, phonons, and liquids.
Contact: Professor Sufei Shi
Professor Sufei Shi’s group primarily focuses on nanomaterial synthesis and fabrication to design structures/devices that are suitable for our electrical and optical studies. They are also constantly developing unique electrical and optical measurement tools that can best characterize electron-photon interactions in low dimensions.
Contact: Professor Joel Plawsky
Professor Joel Plawsky’s research group investigates the mechanisms behind dielectric breakdown in gate, interconnect, and LED materials; understanding the fundamental processes governing change-of-phase heat and mass transfer; developing novel porous materials for microelectronics and photonics applications; and developing new composite thermal interface materials for semiconductor and LED applications.