Brendan Gunning received the 2015 Workshop on Compound Semiconductor Devices and Materials (WOCSEMMAD) Award for the Most Valuable Contribution. Gunning is a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and is advised by ECE Professor W. Alan Doolittle.

Gunning received this award for his research on advances in p-type doping of group III-Nitride semiconductors and for his latest work with extremely high growth rate gallium nitride (GaN). Gunning’s Ph.D. thesis focuses on the epitaxial growth and characterization of highly p-type III-Nitrides using a novel growth technique to address several major challenges in the material. By controlling the surface chemistry to reduce crystal defect formation and promote proper p-type dopant incorporation, Gunning has shown more than an order of magnitude improvement over state-of-the-art p-type GaN.

Combined with the new high growth rate results wherein GaN is grown at greater than 8 um/hour – 20 times faster than traditional MBE methods previously used – this p-type improvement opens the door for new devices and substantial improvement of existing device designs. This research is supported by the National Science Foundation under the Quantum Energy and Sustainable Solar Technologies (QESST) Engineering Research Center at Arizona State University and by ARPA-E.

WOCSEMMAD is the nation’s longest running compound semiconductor conference, covering a broad range of compound semiconductor materials from traditional III-Vs to novel 2D materials. The conference was held February 16-19 in Isle of Palms, South Carolina.

Photo cutline: Brendan Gunning (right) is presented with the Most Valuable Contribution Award by WOCSEMMAD 2015 Conference Chair Leo Schowalter, who is the founder and president of Crystal-IS, Inc.