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Manijeh Razeghi

4:00 p.m
December 3, 2008
Ford ITW Auditorium – Room 1-350

Professor Manijeh Razeghi
Walter P. Murphy Professor
Director of Center for Quantum Devices
"Modern Atomic Engineering:: Inspiration from Nature"
Video
The 20th century has seen a variety of major discoveries in science and technology, especially in the area of compound semiconductors, quantum devices, and nanotechnology. Nanoscale optoelectronics is a key area within nanotechnology, where modern design and fabrication tools allow us to realize compact devices with better efficiency and functionality than ever before. Our optoelectronic systems , like Natural systems, are inherently nanoscale at their heart, yet whereas nature has to use ions and Classical physics , we can use electrons and Quantum physics. Electrons in semiconductors can be 5 orders of magnitude lighter and 8 orders of magnitude faster than ions, and, because of this, we can when we need to, detect electrons and photons on time scales of 1 nanosecond and less.

This talk will focus on recent advances in the atomic engineering of III-V semiconductor optoelectronic materials for a variety of applications important to everyday activities. These applications span many areas, including industrial quality control, public health and safety, and telecommunications. While our eyes only access a narrow part of the electromagnetic spectrum, some important applications require us to emit and/or detect at frequencies of light outside the visible. In some cases we need to see a single photon clearly, and in other cases we need high power lasers that emit over 1021 photons per second.

In my talk, I will discuss problems and solutions relative to demonstrating devices spanning from ultraviolet (UV) to THz frequencies. UV devices (emitters and detectors) will be discussed first, followed by infrared lasers and cameras. In all cases, early attempts to develop these devices were limited by fundamental physical limitations such as material purity and size. Many of these limitations were overcome by moving towards lower dimensional “quantum well” and even smaller “quantum dot” architectures. It will be shown how intricate and subtle modern atomic engineering can be, and how, with quantum engineering , we can improve device performance tremendously .

After having covered modern optoelectronics, I will also talk about some of the technological tools and tricks that go into making the best possible devices and obtaining world record performances. This includes paying meticulous attention to material growth, material characterization, device fabrication, and system demonstration.

Finally, as none of this would have been possible without some brilliant students and a lot of hard work, I will also show how, over the course of 15+ years, the Center for Quantum Devices has grown to become a world class research facility at Northwestern University.

Bio: Manijeh Razeghi received the Doctorat d'État es Sciences Physiques from the Université de Paris, France, in 1980.

After heading the Exploratory Materials Lab at Thomson-CSF (France), she joined Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, as a Walter P. Murphy Professor and Director of the Center for Quantum Devices in Fall 1991, where she created the undergraduate and graduate program in solid-state engineering. She is one of the leading scientists in the field of semiconductor science and technology, pioneering in the development and implementation of major modern epitaxial techniques such as MOCVD, VPE, gas MBE, and MOMBE for the growth of entire compositional ranges of III-V compound semiconductors. She is on the editorial board of many journals such as Journal of Nanotechnology, and Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, an Associate Editor of Opto-Electronics Review. She is on the International Advisory Board for the Polish Committee of Science, and is an Adjunct Professor at the College of Optical Sciences of the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. She has authored or co-authored more than 1000 papers, more than 30 book chapters, and eleven books, including the textbooks Fundamentals of Solid State Engineering (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, U.S.A. 2002) and Fundamentals of Solid State Engineering, 2nd Edition (Springer Science+Business Media, Inc., New York, NY U.S.A. 2006). Two of her books, MOCVD Challenge Vol. 1 (IOP Publishing Ltd., Bristol, U.K., 1989) and MOCVD Challenge Vol. 2 (IOP Publishing Ltd., Bristol, U.K., 1995), discuss some of her pioneering work in InP-GaInAsP and GaAs-GaInAsP based systems. She holds 30 U.S. patents and has given more than 1000 invited and plenary talks. Her current research interest is in nanoscale optoelectronic quantum devices.

Dr. Razeghi is a Fellow of MRS, IOP, IEEE, APS, SPIE, OSA, Fellow and Life Member of Society of Women Engineers (SWE), Fellow of the International Engineering Consortium (IEC), and a member of the Electrochemical Society, ACS, AAAS, and the French Academy of Sciences and Technology. She received the IBM Europe Science and Technology Prize in 1987, the Achievement Award from the SWE in 1995, the R.F. Bunshah Award in 2004, and many best paper awards.

Watch the video of this lecture.

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