American Vacuum Society to honor Brillson

Leonard Brillson, professor and internationally known expert in electronic materials at the OSU Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Physics, will receive the 2006 Gaede-Langmuir Award for Scientific and Technological Achievement from the AVS Science and Technology Society during next fall’s annual AVS meeting in San Francisco.

AVS is the world’s leading professional organization representing scientists and engineers at the center of the science and technology of semiconductor microelectronics. The award recognizes Brillson for more than 30 years of work leading to an understanding of the fundamental importance of atomic scale chemical bonding, metallurgical reactions, and diffusion at interfaces, and their effects on the electrical properties of solid state materials and devices.

Notably, Brillson's pioneering research working showed that semiconductors, the workhorse of modern electronics, chemically react at their atomic-scale interface with other materials to alter how electricity moves across. By controlling how these interfaces form, he showed how devices from transistors to solar cells can be improved. Brillson is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering, a professor of Physics in the College of Mathematics and Physics Sciences, as well as a Center for Materials Research Scholar.