Owing to severe global competition at the marketplace, major high-tech corporations have been scaling back "blue sky" or "curiosity driven" research at corporate R&D labs and increasing their reliance on outsourcing of product components. At the same time, research universities have been adding a materials design science and engineering component to the preparation of future scientists and engineers and becoming involved in technology realization, especially for niche market products. Increasingly, breakthroughs and innovations in materials and devices are coming from the laboratories of research universities.

My research and teaching converge when I am working with engineering graduate students on "real" solid-state engineering leading to possible new niche market products using III-V compound semiconductor materials in electronic and photonic devices, chips, and small systems. My primary materials design tool is molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). I start with function (e.g., high speed optical emitters) and work backwards to determine the best and cheapest way to achieve this function (e.g., high speeds GaAs LEDs for short haul optical links). Students who work with me have a committed interest in a materials science and engineering approach to new or improved semiconductor device development.

Projects currently under investigation in Prof. Woodall's laboratory

Selected Publications

"Metal-Mirror-Based Resonant-Cavity Enhanced Light-Emitting Diodes by the Use of a Tunnel Diode Contact," R. Zhu, M.C. Hargis, J.M.Woodall, and M.R. Melloch, Phot. Tech. Lett., 13(2), 103-105 (2001).

"Ohmic nanocontacts to GaAs using undoped and p-doped Layers of Low-temperature-grown GaAs," T. Lee, N.P. Chen, J. Liu, R.P. Andres, D.B. Janes, E-H. Chen, M.R. Melloch, J.M. Woodall, and R. Reifenberger, Appl. Phys. Lett., 76(2), 212-14 (2000).

"GHz Bandwidth GaAs LEDs," C. Chen, M. Hargis, J. Woodall, M. Melloch, J. Reynolds, E. Yablonovitch, and W. Wang, Appl. Phys. Lett., 74, 3140 (1999).

"Evidence for Misfit Dislocation-related Carrier Accumulation at the InAs/GaP Heterointerface," V. Gopal, E.P. Kvam, T.P. Chin,  and J.M. Woodall, Appl. Phys. Lett., 72, 2319 (1998).

 

Updated: 5/13/02