NSF honors Tyler Grassman with CAREER Award in semiconductor materials research

Compound semiconductor materials are the building blocks of technologies found in lasers, solar cells, and even infrared sensors. Understanding how those materials are defective or unique at the atomic level is key to advancing future science.

At The Ohio State University, Assistant Professor Tyler Grassman is interested in what comes next. He just won a five-year, $613,995 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation to help further that goal.

The CAREER award is the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) most prestigious in support of junior faculty exemplifying the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and their integration.

Grassman’s research focus, and faculty appointment, lies at the intersection of Materials Science and Engineering, as well as Electrical and Computer Engineering. His work involves the integration of dissimilar semiconductor materials. He investigates and identifies the defects to understand how they degrade the parent material's electronic and optical properties. identifying defects in atomic structures and understanding how they might degrade the parent materials’ electronic and optical properties.

Grassman's CAREER project, "Revealing the Fundamental Mechanisms Behind the Dislocation-Induced Electronic States in III-V Semiconductors" specifically focuses on determining the atomic-level underlying source of detrimental electronic levels in dislocations within lattice-mismatched III-V semiconductors.

As he explains, "The research that I proposed is a fundamental scientific question that’s been on my mind for a long time and something that my group has been working toward for a while. So, this award is an opportunity to really go after it using complex research.”

Aside from his role in ECE and CSE, Grassman is associated with the Institute for Materials Research (IMR) at Ohio State. The multidisciplinary institute works as a collaborative between colleges and departments toward the common goal of advancing materials research activities and infrastructure.

This NSF project, he said, is really at the intersection of MSE and ECE. 

"Since we're studying crystal defects (MSE) in order to understand exactly how and why they create electronic levels (i.e. properties) that are detrimental to opto-electronic devices, like lasers, solar cells, and infrared sensors.  I’ll go ahead and make some edits/additions below as potential suggestions, but feel free to re-edit as you think will best fit the need.

Grassman’s NSF project team includes students from his research group, as well as a future team beyond the department contributing respective specialties.

"It’s a tough project and there will be a lot of opportunities (and likely need) for collaboration more broadly within Ohio State, and maybe beyond,” he said.

Grassman joined Ohio State as a research track professor in 2012 and started a tenure track position in 2015. He earned his BS degree in chemistry from the University of Oregon, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science & Engineering from the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, CA. He completed postdoctoral and staff research positions in the ECE Electronic Materials and Devices Laboratory and IMR before joining the faculty roster.

ECE article adapted by Ryan Horns, from a story by Libby Culley, Department of Materials Science and Engineering Communications, culley.36@osu.edu.