Awardee Interviews | Biography: her R. Brundle
Christopher R. Brundle
Dr. Christopher R. Brundle, C.R. Brundle and Associates, “for pioneering early development in the field of electron spectroscopy and sustained applications to surface science and a wide range of industrial materials characterization Issues.”
Christopher R. (Dick) Brundle has been involved in the development and use of electron spectroscopy for 40 years, starting with his graduate work (1965 to 1967; Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry, Imperial College, University of London) using the brand new technique of ultraviolet photoelectron Spectroscopy, UPS, to study the electronic structure of small molecules. While a post-doc at Bell Labs (1968 and 1969) he constructed the first high resolution UPS system in the US, and he and his colleagues used it, in conjunction with early molecular orbital calculations, to determine the electronic structure of a wide variety of molecules. He became interested in the solid state and surface science work going on there and returned to the UK in 1970, as a lecturer in Physical Chemistry at Bradford University, to apply both UPS and XPS to adsorption and reaction at surfaces using a custom designed multi-technique surface UHV analysis system (built by VG Scientific), the forerunner of many such commercial systems. In 1972 the International Journal of Electron Spectroscopy was started, with Dr. Brundle as its Editor, a position he held for 25 years. In 1975 he moved to IBM Research in San Jose, California continuing to work on adsorption at surfaces, particularly magnetic metals and alloys. By 1993, by which time he had held responsibilities for much of the materials characterization capabilities at the IBM Almaden Research Laboratory, he left to start his own consulting and contract research company, providing services to the disk drive and wafer processing high-tech industries. In 1996 he joined Applied Materials, forming the Defect and Thin Film Characterization Laboratory, and, as Director, helped develop 200mm and 300mm analytical and metrology approaches to deal with particle contamination on wafers and the characterization of thin film stacks. In 1993 he returned to a consulting role, part-time, with his current major interest being in the development of angle resolved XPS to provide non-destructive depth profiling information on ultra-thin films. Dr. Brundle has also taught A VS short courses for 25 years and served as Chair of the Northern California Chapter of the AVS twice. His major extra-curricular interest is music promotion and, if you “Google” him, you are likely to find as many references to this as to science, through fiddling Cricket Concerts, an eclectic music series in San Jose, and the Fiddling Cricket Music CD label. In this role he has provided music entertainment at previous AVS National Symposia in San Jose and San Francisco, and hopes to do the same in the 2006 Symposium in San Francisco, when he will be serving as Local Chair.