General Introduction

My group works on the research and development of infrared compound semiconductors for creating next generation technologies. As highlighted by the recent passage of the Chips and Science Act, there is great demand for semiconductor research and innovation, and students with semiconductor training. Semiconductors are crystalline solids that can be grown, and are the basis of all electronics and many laser technologies.  Compared to silicon, compound semiconductors have advantages in speed, power, efficiency, and ability to produce and sensitively detect light, and are an ever expanding materials group including 2D materials and complex oxides. My research has a strong applied physics character to it. We epitaxially grow and structure semiconductors in layers as thin as one millionth the thickness of a human hair, and in one-, two-, and three-dimensional geometries. Nanostructuring materials can profoundly alter their properties, opening the door to advances. We try to make infrared semiconductor devices more efficient, with new capabilities, from new materials and structures. This leads to new and improved technologies in medicine, the environment, and military. For example, infrared light can be used for sensing things like glucose, important to diabetics and in industrial bioreactors; nitrate, important to farmers for precision agriculture; and gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, important for environmental monitoring. Advancement in infrared diode arrays are important for defense technologies, such as semiconductor emitter-based thermal scene projectors; and detector arrays that can operate at ever higher temperatures. There is strong interest in compound semiconductor-based metamaterial-enhanced and quantum dot emitters and avalanche detectors of single and entangled photons as nodal links in the emerging area of quantum sensing, communication, and computing; and in lidar for autonomous vehicles. By building semiconductors with new capabilities, we open the door to new technologies that can improve our lives.