Electronic Materials

Electronic materials synthesis and characterization is an area of significant growth for the Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department. Over the past few years, projects under the direction of Professors Lamb and Parsons demonstrate that chemical engineering can impact significantly a research area that is traditionally dominated by materials scientists, electrical engineers, and physicists. Their expertise in surface characterization, reaction analysis, catalysis, and computer simulation are being brought to bear on problems related to semiconductor and insulator synthesis, new catalytic materials, and vapor/solid interfacial phenomena. Since this activity is woven across disciplines, the research in the Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department involves strong collaborations with other researchers on campus, in industry, at national laboratories, and at other universities. Professor Lamb's collaborations in Materials Science and Parsons' collaborations in Electrical Engineering and the Engineering Research Center for Advanced Electronic Materials Processing on NC State's Centennial Campus are good examples.

Research in Professor Lamb's lab currently focuses on epitaxial growth of wide bandgap semiconductors. Research in his group has lead to the development of Selected Energy Epitaxy, a novel supersonic molecular beam technique for III-Nitride semiconductor synthesis. The Group III nitrides, AlN, GaN, and InN, are wide bandgap semiconductors with a variety of attractive optoelectronic applications, including blue solid-state lasers for a new generation of compact disk players and optical communication devices. Work in Professor Parsons' lab on low temperature silicon and dielectric deposition elucidates surface processes that could lead to new electronics applications including high-performance, active-matrix flat-panel displays on low-cost flexible substrates. Parsons also works in advanced dielectric and silicon processing, including high-k dielectrics and silicon-on-insulator materials for use in advanced high-speed silicon integrated circuits.