Awardee Interviews | Biography: Gottlieb Oehrlein
Gottlieb Oehrlein
Gottlieb Oehrlein is a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received a Vordiplom in Physics from Würzburg University, Germany (1976), and a Ph.D. in Physics from the State University of New York (SUNY), Albany (1981). For his PhD research on defects in solid state materials he received the SUNY Chancellor’s Distinguished Dissertation Award. He then joined IBM's Research Division, Yorktown Heights, N.Y., as a Research Staff Member where he worked on Plasma Science and Technology. In 1993 he returned as a Professor of Physics to his Alma Mater State University of New York, Albany. In 2000 he moved to the University of Maryland.
Dr. Oehrlein is best known for his work on the use of non-equilibrium plasma for advanced materials processing, in particular for his contributions to the understanding/control of plasma surface interactions (PSI) and advancement of plasma etching methods. Groundbreaking insights on plasma-solid reactions were obtained by developing and applying novel real-time and in-situ plasma-surface interaction characterization methodologies and combining them with incident/outgoing particle characterization methods for critical plasma processes/materials. The scientific understanding obtained enabled systematic advancements of plasma materials processing, including the first experimental demonstration of atomic layer etching (ALE) of SiO2by the Oehrlein group. These PSI research methodologies are also the basis of the Oehrlein group’s work on plasma material interactions using atmospheric pressure plasma sources for modification of organic materials, biomolecules, foods, control of microorganisms, and catalysts to produce renewable fuels.
Dr. Oehrlein has coauthored more than 300 publications with ~12000 citations and H index of 60. He served numerous times as member of the Executive Committee of the AVS Plasma Science and Technology Division, taught a professional course “High-Density Plasma Processing of Electronic Materials” for AVS from 1995–2002, and served as Associate Editor, J. Vacuum Science and Technology. Dr. Oehrlein helped establish the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference “Advanced Etch Technology for Nanopatterning” in 2012, and co-chaired (2012, 2013) and chaired (2014) this meeting. Dr. Oehrlein also served as the co-chair of the 2019 International ALE Workshop. He is a Fellow of AVS (1998), International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (2000), and International Plasma Chemistry Society (2017). He received the Electronics Division Award of the Electrochemical Society (1992), the IBM Faculty Award in 2002 and 2010, the Plasma Prize of the Plasma Science and Technology Division of AVS (2005), and will receive the DPS Nishizawa Award (2019).