10th International Conference on Spectroscopic Ellipsometry

Prof. Steven M. George is Professor in the Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. George received his B.S. in Chemistry from Yale University (1977) and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley (1983). Dr. George has more than 400 publications in the areas of thin film growth and etching, surface science, and physical chemistry. In addition, he currently has 16 issued U.S. or PCT patents and 12 U.S. or PCT patent applications undergoing review. Dr. George’s research interests are in the areas of surface chemistry, thin film growth and etching and nanostructure engineering. He is directing a research effort focusing on atomic layer deposition (ALD), atomic layer etching (ALE) and molecular layer deposition (MLD). This research is examining new surface chemistry, measuring thin film growth and etching rates, characterizing the properties of films and developing new reactors for ALD, ALE and MLD. Dr. George chaired the first Topical Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD2001) in May 2001. He has been on the Conference Committees of all subsequent ALD meetings. Dr. George teaches a one-day short course on ALD for the American Vacuum Society (AVS). He also was President of AVS (2014). Dr. George has received a number of awards including the ALD Innovation Award from the AVS International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition (2013) and an R&D 100 Award for Particle-ALD™ (2004). Dr. George is a Fellow of the AVS (2000) and the APS (1997). He is also a co-founder of ALD NanoSolutions, Inc., a company that is working to commercialize ALD technology.

Alain Diebold is Professor Emeritus and Empire Innovation Professor of Nanoscale Science in the College of Nanotechnology, Science and Engineering at the University at Albany, SUNY. Professor Diebold maintains an active, funded research program in the materials science of 2D materials and in the characterization and metrology of new semiconductor materials and structures. He is an AVS Fellow and a SPIE Fellow. Significant publications include a Fall 2021 book from Springer Nature entitled the Optical and Electrical Properties of Nanoscale Materials (co-author) and the Handbook of Silicon Semiconductor Metrology (editor and chapter author). Through collaboration with the industrial partners students and post-doctoral fellows have advanced the characterization and metrology of advanced materials and structures through Mueller Matix spectroscopic ellipsometry based scatterometry, microscopy, and both laboratory and synchrotron-based X-Ray methods.

Prof. Shiyuan Liu received his PhD in mechanical engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, China in 1998, and worked as a visiting scholar at University of Manchester, Manchester, UK from 2000 to 2001. He is currently a professor of mechanical engineering and a professor of optical engineering at HUST. His research interests include computational imaging and computational lithography, micro/nano measurement technology and instrumentation, optical metrology and defect inspection for semiconductor manufacturing, etc. Prof. Liu has led the development of a series of advanced and novel Mueller matrix ellipsometers, including a broadband Mueller matrix ellipsometer covering the ultraviolet-visible-infrared (UV-VIS-IR) region, a submicron-lateral-resolved imaging Mueller matrix ellipsometer, and a microsecond time-resolved high-speed Mueller matrix ellipsometer. He holds more than 100 patents and has authored or co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed journal papers. He was elected a Council Member of International Committee of Measurements and Instrumentation (ICMI) in 2015, and was awarded the National Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholars by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). He is also a founder of Wuhan Eoptics Inc., a company that is working to commercialize spectroscopic ellipsometers.

Vanya Darakchieva is Professor in Materials Science at Lund University. She holds a PhD from Linköping University (2004). Her background is in semiconductor physics with focus on developing (ultra)wide bandgap semiconductors for high-frequency and power electronics. She is also developing spectroscopic ellipsometry techniques for studying electronic transport in materials from bulk to the nanoscale. Her research interests include Terahertz Ellipsometry and optical Hall effect and she is currently developing Terahertz-Electron-Paramagnetic-Resonance-Ellipsometry. She has established and she is leading two interdisciplinary centers: i) VINNOVA Competence center for III-Nitride technology – C3NiT-Janzén and ii) Terahertz Materials Analysis Center.  Her research project portfolio (PI~30 MEuro) includes awards from EU Commission, Vinnova, VR, SSF, ERC, KAW etc. She authored/co-authored 190+ peer reviewed journal papers.

Stefan Zollner received his BS in Physics from Universität Regensburg (Germany) in 1983 and his MS in physics (1987) and Ph.D. in physics (1991) from Universität Stuttgart (Germany) and the Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research. After a postdoctoral year at the IBM Research Division in Yorktown Heights, NY, and a five-year appointment at Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory (US-DOE), he worked as a semiconductor engineer (Motorola, Freescale, IBM) for 15 years in metrology and process integration. Since 2010, he has been the Head of the Department of Physics at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM. His research interests include precision measurements of temperature-dependent optical constants using spectroscopic ellipsometry and their interpretation to determine basic properties of solids, ultrafast processes in semiconductors using femtosecond pump-probe laser spectroscopy, and the development of novel materials for applications in microelectronics and optoelectronics. Dr. Zollner is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Vacuum Society and an IEEE Senior Member. He is an author of about 200 peer-reviewed journal articles.

Yuxiang Zheng received his B.E. and M.E. degrees in Microelectronics Technology at Xi’an Jiaotong University in 1990 and 1993, respectively. He earned his Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics at Fudan University in 1996. He began his academic career as a faculty member in the Department of Physics at Fudan University (1996–1999) before joining the School of Science and Engineering at Nihon University, Japan (1999–2001). During his time in Japan, he contributed to the Next-Generation Optical Storage Program, a large-scale national research initiative of Japan. Since May 2006, he has served as a professor in the Department of Optical Science and Engineering at Fudan University. His research focuses on optical and magneto-optical properties of solids, advanced spectroscopic techniques, the fabrication and characterization of optical thin films. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and holds more than 20 granted patents. He has held several distinguished roles, including the Editor-in-Chief of Modern Optics, a nationally designated textbook for higher education in China, the Recipient of the Ministry of Education’s New Century Excellent Talents Program Award (2006), and the Recipient of the Shanghai Academic/Technology Research Leader Program Grant (2012). Since 2014, he has served as Vice Chairperson of the Shanghai Optical Society.