John Robertson | |
|---|---|
 John Robertson in 2015 | |
| Born | 1950 (age 73–74) [1] |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge (BA, PhD) |
| Awards | FRS (2015) [2] |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Electronic States in Amorphous Semi-Conductors (1975) |
| Website | eng |
John Robertson FRS [2] (born 1950) is a Professor of Electronics, in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. He is a leading specialist in the theory of amorphous carbon and related materials. [3] [4] [5]
Robertson received his Bachelor of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy [6] degrees from the University of Cambridge. His PhD was awarded in 1975 for research on electronic states in amorphous semiconductors. [6]
Following his PhD, Robertson worked at the Central Electricity Research Laboratories for 18 years,[ citation needed ] and in 1994 returned to Cambridge. He has published over 600 journal papers with around 33,000 citations. [3] His main topic of research is theory of carbon materials. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] Other research interests include: carbon nanotubes, graphene, chemical vapour deposition, electronic applications (experimental and calculation); modelling of CVD mechanisms; carbon interconnects, carbon conductors, carbon for supercapacitors; high-κ dielectrics for complementary metal oxide semiconductor transistors; high-κ oxides on high mobility substrates such as InGaAs, Ge (modelling); transparent conducting oxides, amorphous oxide semiconductors (AOS) such as indium gallium zinc oxide, their thin film transistors, instability mechanisms (calculations); density functional calculations of semiconductors, oxides, carbon materials, and hybrid density functional calculations for correct band gaps; functional oxides, TiO2. [5] [4]
His research has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). [12]
Robertson is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Materials Research Society, and an Emeritus Editor of the journal Diamond and Related Materials. [13] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2015, [14] his certificate of election reads: "In recognition of his sustained contribution to the production and development of electronic devices". [2]
Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is a vacuum deposition method used to produce high-quality, and high-performance, solid materials. The process is often used in the semiconductor industry to produce thin films.
A heterojunction is an interface between two layers or regions of dissimilar semiconductors. These semiconducting materials have unequal band gaps as opposed to a homojunction. It is often advantageous to engineer the electronic energy bands in many solid-state device applications, including semiconductor lasers, solar cells and transistors. The combination of multiple heterojunctions together in a device is called a heterostructure, although the two terms are commonly used interchangeably. The requirement that each material be a semiconductor with unequal band gaps is somewhat loose, especially on small length scales, where electronic properties depend on spatial properties. A more modern definition of heterojunction is the interface between any two solid-state materials, including crystalline and amorphous structures of metallic, insulating, fast ion conductor and semiconducting materials.
Conductive polymers or, more precisely, intrinsically conducting polymers (ICPs) are organic polymers that conduct electricity. Such compounds may have metallic conductivity or can be semiconductors. The main advantage of conductive polymers is that they are easy to process, mainly by dispersion. Conductive polymers are generally not thermoplastics, i.e., they are not thermoformable. But, like insulating polymers, they are organic materials. They can offer high electrical conductivity but do not show similar mechanical properties to other commercially available polymers. The electrical properties can be fine-tuned using the methods of organic synthesis and by advanced dispersion techniques.
Amorphous carbon is free, reactive carbon that has no crystalline structure. Amorphous carbon materials may be stabilized by terminating dangling-π bonds with hydrogen. As with other amorphous solids, some short-range order can be observed. Amorphous carbon is often abbreviated to aC for general amorphous carbon, aC:H or HAC for hydrogenated amorphous carbon, or to ta-C for tetrahedral amorphous carbon.
Organic semiconductors are solids whose building blocks are pi-bonded molecules or polymers made up by carbon and hydrogen atoms and – at times – heteroatoms such as nitrogen, sulfur and oxygen. They exist in the form of molecular crystals or amorphous thin films. In general, they are electrical insulators, but become semiconducting when charges are either injected from appropriate electrodes, upon doping or by photoexcitation.
An organic field-effect transistor (OFET) is a field-effect transistor using an organic semiconductor in its channel. OFETs can be prepared either by vacuum evaporation of small molecules, by solution-casting of polymers or small molecules, or by mechanical transfer of a peeled single-crystalline organic layer onto a substrate. These devices have been developed to realize low-cost, large-area electronic products and biodegradable electronics. OFETs have been fabricated with various device geometries. The most commonly used device geometry is bottom gate with top drain and source electrodes, because this geometry is similar to the thin-film silicon transistor (TFT) using thermally grown SiO2 as gate dielectric. Organic polymers, such as poly(methyl-methacrylate) (PMMA), can also be used as dielectric. One of the benefits of OFETs, especially compared with inorganic TFTs, is their unprecedented physical flexibility, which leads to biocompatible applications, for instance in the future health care industry of personalized biomedicines and bioelectronics.
David John Hugh Cockayne FRS FInstP was Professor in the physical examination of materials in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford and professorial fellow at Linacre College from 2000 to 2009. He was the president of the International Federation of Societies for Microscopy from 2003 till 2007, then vice-president 2007 to 2010.
Hafnium(IV) oxide is the inorganic compound with the formula HfO
2. Also known as hafnium dioxide or hafnia, this colourless solid is one of the most common and stable compounds of hafnium. It is an electrical insulator with a band gap of 5.3~5.7 eV. Hafnium dioxide is an intermediate in some processes that give hafnium metal.
Indium(III) oxide (In2O3) is a chemical compound, an amphoteric oxide of indium.
Marvin Lou Cohen is an American–Canadian theoretical physicist. He is a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Cohen is a leading expert in the field of condensed matter physics. He is widely known for his seminal work on the electronic structure of solids.
Alex Zunger is a theoretical physicist, research professor, at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has authored more than 150 papers in Physical Review Letters and Physical Reviews B Rapid Communication, has an h-index over 150, number of citations over 113,000. He co-authored one of the top-five most cited papers ever to be published in the Physical Review family in its over 100 years' history.
Nicholas Harrison FRSC FinstP is an English theoretical physicist known for his work on developing theory and computational methods for discovering and optimising advanced materials. He is the Professor of Computational Materials Science in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London where he is co-director of the Institute of Molecular Science and Engineering.
A carbon nanotube field-effect transistor (CNTFET) is a field-effect transistor that utilizes a single carbon nanotube (CNT) or an array of carbon nanotubes as the channel material, instead of bulk silicon, as in the traditional MOSFET structure. There have been major developments since CNTFETs were first demonstrated in 1998.
Silicene is a two-dimensional allotrope of silicon, with a hexagonal honeycomb structure similar to that of graphene. Contrary to graphene, silicene is not flat, but has a periodically buckled topology; the coupling between layers in silicene is much stronger than in multilayered graphene; and the oxidized form of silicene, 2D silica, has a very different chemical structure from graphene oxide.
Paul Anthony Midgley FRS is a Professor of Materials Science in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge.
A chemiresistor is a material that changes its electrical resistance in response to changes in the nearby chemical environment. Chemiresistors are a class of chemical sensors that rely on the direct chemical interaction between the sensing material and the analyte. The sensing material and the analyte can interact by covalent bonding, hydrogen bonding, or molecular recognition. Several different materials have chemiresistor properties: semiconducting metal oxides, some conductive polymers, and nanomaterials like graphene, carbon nanotubes and nanoparticles. Typically these materials are used as partially selective sensors in devices like electronic tongues or electronic noses.
Amorphous silicon (a-Si) is the non-crystalline form of silicon used for solar cells and thin-film transistors in LCDs.
Andrea Carlo Ferrari is a professor of nanotechnology at the University of Cambridge.
The Forouhi–Bloomer model is a mathematical formula for the frequency dependence of the complex-valued refractive index. The model can be used to fit the refractive index of amorphous and crystalline semiconductor and dielectric materials at energies near and greater than their optical band gap. The dispersion relation bears the names of Rahim Forouhi and Iris Bloomer, who created the model and interpreted the physical significance of its parameters. The model is aphysical due to its incorrect asymptotic behavior and non-Hermitian character. These shortcomings inspired modified versions of the model as well as development of the Tauc–Lorentz model.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
