Spyridon Pavlidis
North Carolina State University, NC·Engineering·Early-career
As more of the world gains access to electricity, demand for energy will climb, and much of that energy is lost as heat inside the semiconductor switches that route power through the grid, vehicles and data centers. Those losses are set by the material the switch is made from.
- Fields
Engineering
Materials Science
Physics
- Topics
ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors
AlGaN
aluminum nitride
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Extract impact ionization coefficients — the parameters governing avalanche breakdown — from avalanche photodiodes fabricated on native aluminum nitride substrates, to establish how large an electric field aluminum-rich AlGaN can support.
- Engineer thermally stable, low-resistance ohmic contacts to aluminum-rich AlGaN by using ex-situ and in-situ interlayers that compensate polarization charge and by heavy silicon implantation with activation annealing to form tunneling contacts.
- Test Crystal Heterogeneous Integration as a route to p-type regions by bonding p-type compound semiconductors to n-type AlGaN, then measuring high-voltage breakdown and photoresponse of the resulting PN junctions to infer band structure and carrier transport.
- Design, fabricate and characterize AlGaN diodes rated at 1–5 kilovolts and assess their stability after high-temperature exposure.
- Investigate a phototransistor that heterogeneously integrates AlGaN with other compound semiconductors, enabling fast optical gating and high-voltage blocking that resists electromagnetic interference.
More about the research
Silicon is reaching its limits, and wide bandgap materials are already replacing it; ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors are the next step. Aluminum-rich aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN) is a leading candidate because it can hold off very large electric fields and tolerate high temperatures and electromagnetic interference. Unanswered physics questions and fabrication barriers have kept it from reaching that potential, but the recent commercial availability of aluminum nitride (AlN) wafers makes it possible to study high-quality AlGaN films for the first time.
Why it matters
Power electronics set the efficiency of electric grids, vehicles and renewable energy systems, and losses there waste a large share of generated electricity. Ultra-wide bandgap AlGaN devices could cut those losses while operating reliably at high temperature and in electrically noisy environments, benefiting utilities, electric transportation and anyone depending on a stable grid.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Anhar Bhuiyan
University of Massachusetts-Lowell, MA·Engineering
Establish a low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) growth platform that produces thick, lightly silicon-doped β-Ga₂O₃ layers with high electron mobility and very few unwanted background charge carriers.
Ariful Haque
Texas State University, TX·Materials Science
Grow uniform, delamination-free diamond films on gallium oxide (Ga2O3) by first forming an ultrathin quenched carbon (Q-carbon) interlayer through pulsed laser annealing.
Elaheh Ahmadi
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Engineering·Early-career
Demonstrate enhancement-mode β-Ga2O3 fin field-effect transistors with breakdown voltages beyond 3 kV, specific on-resistance under 1 milliohm-cm², and switching efficiency above 98% at 15 kHz.
The school
North Carolina State University: 40 labs on PI Pages, $717M a year on research, 603 research doctorates a year.
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