Compounds pioneer bags IEDM award
By Michael Hatcher in Washington, DC
University of Florida professor and compound semiconductor processing pioneer Stephen Pearton has won the Electron Devices Society s 2007 J J Ebers Award.
Recognizing “outstanding technical contributions to electron devices”, the award was made at the International Electron Devices Meeting, taking place in Washington, DC, this week.
Australia-born Pearton has been a key figure in the development of various III-V processing techniques.
At Bell Laboratories, he developed ion implantation to dope GaAs-based MESFETs, HBTs and HEMTs, as well as specialized annealing steps.
Other crucial developments included Ohmic and Schottky contact technologies, and dry-etching processes for both transistors and laser diodes.
Although they were initially developed for AT&T s phone network, many of these processes now feature in GaAs manufacturing lines to make devices for cell phone handsets and radar systems.
More recently, Pearton has switched his attention to GaN-based LEDs, lasers and transistors, for example GaN-on-silicon devices that could be useful for medical diagnoses (see related story).
Previous winners of the J J Ebers award include Herbert Kroemer, the UCSB Nobel laureate, and IBM s Bernie Meyerson.
Author
Michael Hatcher is editor of Compound Semiconductor magazine and compoundsemiconductor.net.
