Principal investigator

Prof. John R. Abelson.

Professor of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

Link to the faculty page at MSE

Group members

Stephanie Bogle

Graduate Student

Characterization of nanostructural order in amorphous materials via Fluctuation Electron Microscopy (FEM). A coordinated study between FEM simulations and FEM via Scanning TEM provides a comprehensive look at varying amounts of structural order in amorphous materials. Materials studied include amorphous silicon, phase change chalcogenides and metal diborides. .

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Kristof Darmawikarta

Graduate Student

Phase change transition of chalcogenide materials

Navneet Kumar

Graduate Research Assistant

Development of transition metal diboride-nitride as a barrier layer material for copper metallization in microelectronics.

Single molecule precursor CVD of titanium diboride. I have found the optimum growth condition to get stoichiometric high quality TiB2 films.

Development of multilayer coating of transition metal diboride-nitride layers for tribological applications using CVD and ALD techniques.

Teresa Lazarz

Graduate student / Research Assistant

Chemical vapor deposition of ruthenium from tricarbonyl(1,3-cyclohexadiene)Ru(0). My research focus on both thin film deposition and the reactions during deposition.

Dr. Bong-Sub Lee

Postdoctoral Researcher

The main research focus is the fundamental understanding of "phase change materials," which are used for data storage devices such as rewriteable optical discs and non-volatile phase change RAMs.

Structural, optical, and electronic properties are being studied; our unique technique Fluctuation Electron Microscopy (FEM) enables the detection of subcritical and supercritical nuclei in amorphous phases.

Professors John R. Abelson and Stephen G. Bishop (ECE) are leading this project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF, 2004-2010). We are also working in close collaboration with several institutions, especially IBM Almaden Research Center.

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Tony Li

Graduate Student

Simulation of paracrystals

Angel Yanguas-Gil

Postdoctoral Researcher - Fundación la Caixa fellow

Metal diboride and metal oxide thin films from borohydride precursors: nucleation studies, microstructure evolution and conformality of films.

Plasma assisted low temperature thermal CVD and high temperature epitaxial growth.

Fractal properties of surfaces and computer simulation of thin film nucleation and growth.

[personal web page]