{"585565":{"#nid":"585565","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Pioneer of Modern Electronics","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EBy Michael Baxter\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EWe think of the engineers, scientists and inventors who change the world as icons. Alexander Graham Bell. Thomas Edison. Albert Einstein \u0026ndash; their largest contributions can be recited in just a few words.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EBut some of them live among us, unnoticed, even though they too made contributions that profoundly impacted everyday life. Russell Dupuis is one of them.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThe smartphone you peer into, the LED bulb in your desk lamp, the Blu-Ray player that serves up your favorite film \u0026ndash; all are here largely because of Dupuis, a professor in electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Tech.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThat\u0026rsquo;s because an essential component of their manufacturing traces back to a process that Dupuis developed in the late 1970s, a process that ushered in a new breed of mass-produced compound semiconductors. These electronic components \u0026ndash; particularly those forged of elements from columns III and V in the periodic table \u0026mdash; can operate at extremely high frequencies or emit light with extraordinary efficiency. Today, they\u0026rsquo;re the working essence of everything from handheld laser pointers to stadium Jumbotrons.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThe process is known as metalorganic chemical vapor deposition, or MOCVD, and until Dupuis, no one had figured out how to use it to grow high-quality semiconductors using those III-V elements. Essentially, MOCVD works by combining the atomic elements with molecules of organic gas and flowing the mixture over a hot semiconductor wafer. When repeated, the process grows layer after layer of crystals that can have any number of electrical properties, depending on the elements used.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EDupuis remembers well the autumn day in 1976 he first produced a working III-V semiconductor device using MOCVD. \u0026ldquo;It was a solar cell,\u0026rdquo; he recalls. \u0026ldquo;I had built my own reactor mostly out of spare parts to study the MOCVD process to grow a semiconductor on a gallium arsenide substrate. I took the solar cell outside and connected it to a current meter, and it worked pretty good. Since MOCVD was viable for solar cell technology, I thought it should be good for lasers and LEDs.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EHe was right. At the time, Dupuis was a member of the technical staff at Rockwell International, hired to create working devices based on the MOCVD process being explored by Rockwell chemist Hal Manasevit.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;They knew they needed devices to make systems,\u0026rdquo; he says, \u0026ldquo;and I sold them on the idea that I could evaluate different materials using MOCVD to make those devices.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EAfter his initial success, Dupuis built a second reactor and refined the process. He then published a paper on his discovery and presented it at the 1977 Device Research Conference, an annual gathering of industry professionals and academics. But before the presentation, he was approached by a familiar face: Nick Holonyak, a University of Illinois professor who was Dupuis\u0026rsquo; mentor.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;He came to my room and said, \u0026lsquo;I see you\u0026rsquo;ve got an interesting paper \u0026ndash; can you build thin layers with MOCVD?\u0026rsquo; Dupuis says, laughing. \u0026ldquo;I said, I can do as many as you need. Nick looked at me like I was crazy and said, \u0026lsquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve been trying to do this for five years.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EHolonyak is a history-making engineer in his own right. Mentored by John Bardeen, the inventor of the transistor, he became the first to create a visible light-emitting diode in 1962, a breakthrough that continues to transform electrical lighting. While a senior at Illinois in 1969, Dupuis joined Holonyak\u0026rsquo;s lab.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EToday, at the age of 88, Holonyak continues to operate a lab, and his praise for Dupuis is nothing short of ebullient.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;Russ Dupuis should be known as the person who invented the big process that\u0026rsquo;s now used to manufacture all the lasers and LEDs,\u0026rdquo; Holonyak says. \u0026ldquo;He has all the tricks to handle the complicated gases, the complicated chemistry, the stuff that explodes. I actually call the process \u0026lsquo;Dupuis-MOCVD\u0026rsquo; \u0026ndash; I hyphenate it.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ETheir meet-up at the conference led Holonyak and Dupuis to reunite in the name of electrical engineering. Together, they published a paper after Dupuis demonstrated that MOCVD was superior to another emerging process, molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), in growing high-purity layers for compound semiconductors. In other words, they showed that MOCVD would work even for compound semiconductor devices that required complex structures.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EMeanwhile, MOCVD began to take off as an electronics manufacturing process. Today, it remains the most widely used technology for creating thin-film compound semiconductors for electrical devices.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EDupuis left Rockwell in 1979 to join AT\u0026amp;T Bell Labs and later transitioned to academia, joining the faculty at the University of Texas, where he worked for 14 years. In 2002, he inquired about a position in Georgia Tech\u0026rsquo;s College of Engineering.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;It was a chance to work with really smart graduate students,\u0026rdquo; he remembers. \u0026ldquo;Plus, Georgia Tech had a building that was perfect for a clean room setup. I announced I was leaving a year before I actually left Texas, and when I walked in the door at Georgia Tech, the new lab was finished. The support here has been exceptional.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThese days, Dupuis is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and holds the Steve W. Chaddick Endowed Chair in Electro-optics. He continues to explore new combinations of atomic elements to make thin-film compound semiconductors.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EAnd while he may go unrecognized in the local Starbucks, he has not escaped acclaim. In 2003, the White House welcomed him, Nick Holonyak and a third engineer, George Craford, awarding all three the National Medal of Technology. Most recently, in 2015, he was one of five recipients of the National Academy of Engineering\u0026rsquo;s esteemed Charles Stark Draper Prize \u0026ndash; again, honored alongside his mentor, Holonyak.\u0026nbsp;\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nWhile appreciative of the honors, Dupuis remains grounded as an engineer, more at ease with labor than with glamour.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;I remember our team in Holonyak\u0026rsquo;s lab hand-building 36 furnaces in the machine shop to support a project,\u0026rdquo; says the man whose reactor forged from spare parts ended up making history. \u0026ldquo;New ideas don\u0026rsquo;t require the best equipment. So if you\u0026rsquo;ve got a new idea, get your act together, and with the tools on hand, try it and test it. Because someone somewhere else may get there before you do.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Russell Dupuis\u2019 discovery 40 years ago gave us today\u2019s definitive process for mass-produced electronics"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EThe smartphone you peer into, the LED bulb in your desk lamp, the Blu-Ray player that serves up your favorite film \u0026ndash; all are here largely because of Dupuis, a professor in electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Tech.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"The smartphone you peer into, the LED bulb in your desk lamp, the Blu-Ray player that serves up your favorite film \u2013 all are here largely because of Dupuis, a professor in electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Tech."}],"uid":"27842","created_gmt":"2017-01-05 21:03:30","changed_gmt":"2017-01-05 21:03:59","author":"Ashlee Gardner","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2017-01-05T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2017-01-05T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"585564":{"id":"585564","type":"image","title":"Russell Dupuis","body":null,"created":"1483649679","gmt_created":"2017-01-05 20:54:39","changed":"1483649679","gmt_changed":"2017-01-05 20:54:39","alt":"","file":{"fid":"223223","name":"drrusselldupuis-rgb-1_small.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/drrusselldupuis-rgb-1_small.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/drrusselldupuis-rgb-1_small.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":110575,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/drrusselldupuis-rgb-1_small.jpg?itok=Gvppphux"}}},"media_ids":["585564"],"groups":[{"id":"1255","name":"School of Electrical and Computer Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"145","name":"Engineering"}],"keywords":[{"id":"2461","name":"Russell Dupuis"},{"id":"1259","name":"electrical engineering"},{"id":"14922","name":"LED"},{"id":"167686","name":"Semiconductors"},{"id":"173144","name":"MOCVD"},{"id":"167411","name":"solar cells"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39451","name":"Electronics and Nanotechnology"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAshlee Gardner\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nCommunications Manager, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nashlee.gardner@ece.gatech.edu\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["ashlee.gardner@ece.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}