CEM would like to congratulate Prof. Joseph Heremans, (Depts. of 
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Physics) on being named to the National Academy of Engineering. Prof. Heremans was chosen for his discoveries in thermal energy transfer and conversion to electricity and for the commercial devices employed in automobiles. Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions that may be accorded to an individual engineer during their lifetime. Read more here.
Category Archives: CEM Faculty
CEM Faculty Prof. Len Brillson selected as a 2013 MRS Fellow
CEM would like to congratulate CEM Faculty Member Prof. Len Brillson (Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering) on his selection as a 2013 Materials Research Society (MRS) Fellow. This is a notable achievement considering that 0.2% of MRS members are selected to be Fellows. MRS is the fifth society to select Prof. Brillson as a Fellow. The other societies of which he is a Fellow exemplify the interdisciplinary nature of his research: American Physical Society (APS), AVS: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and Processing, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
International Team Develops First High-Temperature Spin-Field-Effect Transistor
An international team of researchers featuring CEM IRG-1 member and Texas A&M University physicist Dr. Jairo Sinova has announced a breakthrough that gives a new spin to semiconductor nanoelectronics and the world of information technology.
The team has developed an electrically controllable device whose functionality is based on an electron’s spin. Their results, the culmination of a 20-year scientific quest involving many international researchers and groups, are published in the current issue of “Science.”
The team, which also includes researchers from the Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory and the Universities of Cambridge and Nottingham in the United Kingdom as well as the Academy of Sciences and Charles University in the Czech Republic, is the first to combine the spin-helix state and anomalous Hall effect to create a realistic spin-field-effect transistor (FET) operable at high temperatures, complete with an AND-gate logic device — the first such realization in the type of transistors originally proposed by Purdue University’s Supriyo Datta and Biswajit Das in 1989.
“One of the major stumbling blocks was that to manipulate spin, one may also destroy it,” Sinova explains. “It has only recently been realized that one could manipulate it without destroying it by choosing a particular set-up for the device and manipulating the material. One also has to detect it without destroying it, which we were able to do by exploiting our findings from our study of the spin Hall effect six years ago. It is the combination of these basic physics research projects that has given rise to the first spin-FET.”
- excerpted from full press release
To learn more about the team’s research, go to http://faculty.physics.tamu.edu/sinova/.
Len Brillson, CEM Faculty Member and IRG-2 Co-Leader, Chosen as NSF American Competitiveness and Innovation (ACI) Fellow for 2010
Prof. Len Brillson, CEM Faculty member and IRG-2 co-Leader, has been chosen as a American Competitiveness and Innovation (ACI) Fellow for 2010 by the NSF Division of Materials Research. As part of the ACI Fellowship, Prof. Brillson will receive up to $360,000 in research funding from NSF. The ACI Fellowship citation states: “For establishing the optical signature of a leading defect in ZnO, opening the way to monitor and study processes that promote p-type conductivity, a major current objective in semiconductor optoelectronics. He is also recognized for his outstanding efforts in student mentoring and broadening participation of underrepresented groups in science.”
NSF/NBC Learn series segment features CEM member Kathy Flores
Online videos explain the science behind winning gold at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games
A collaboration between NSF and NBC Learn, “The Science of the Olympic Winter Games“, is a fast-moving, 16-part, video series for students and adults capitalizing on next February’s Vancouver Olympics to focus on the science behind how athletes skate, ski, jump and curl their way to winter Olympic gold.
The segment Slapshot Physics features the CEM’s Education and Outreach Director, Kathy Flores. This and other segments from the series can be streamed at the NBC Learn website.
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