Awardee Interviews | Biography: Leonard J. Brillson
Leonard J. Brillson
Leonard J. Brillson is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Professor of Physics, and Center for Materials Research Scholar at The Ohio State University, where he currently leads an interdisciplinary research effort in electronic materials. Prior to moving to academia, he held a number of management positions at Xerox Corporation's Joseph C. Wilson Center for Research and Technology, where he directed the Materials Research Laboratory, one of several major research departments in Xerox's Corporate Research Division, and had responsibility for Xerox's long-range physical science and technology programs at the company's research headquarters in Rochester, N.Y. He completed his A.B. in Physics at Princeton University in 1967 and his Ph.D. in solid state physics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1972. He is a Fellow of the AVS, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a Fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a former Governing Board member of the American Institute of Physics. Dr. Brillson continues to maintain an interdisciplinary research program directed at the basic understanding and atomic-scale control of semiconductor interfaces and electrical contacts. He is author of over 275 journal articles on solid-state physics and surface science, 6 book chapters, 2 edited books, 2 patents, and a citation classic monograph, “The Structure and Properties of Metal-Semiconductor Interfaces.” His work has received over 5,000 citations in professional journals. He has served as Associate Editor for Surface Science Magazine, the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology and, for over a decade, the Journal of Electronic Materials. Currently he directs and supervises a group of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and undergraduates who work in three state of-the-art laboratories that he developed. As a scientist at Xerox Corporation, Dr. Brillson established the importance of interfacial reactions at metal-semiconductor interfaces and developed atomic-scale techniques to control the electronic barriers that form at their junction. Using surface science techniques to monitor interface bonding and composition as contacts are formed, atomic layer by layer, he demonstrated that chemical reactions are a common feature at metal-semiconductor interfaces, even at room temperature, that they could be characterized thermodynamically, and that the reacted layers and defects that resulted play a key role electronically. His current research group is engaged in a broad science and engineering program in the structure and properties of electronic materials interfaces, emphasizing compound semiconductors for high speed microelectronic and optoelectronic device structures, wide band gap semiconductors for sensor and display applications, and thin film dielectrics for insulating gate structures. He has presented more than 90 invited lectures at national or international scientific conferences and has received numerous research awards, including Ohio State's Lumley Research Award (twice), Xerox Corporation's Outstanding Achievement Award, Surface Science Magazine's Excellence Award, IEEE Columbus' Technical Achievement Award, and Citation Classic recognition by the Institute for Scientific Information. He is married to the former Janice Lynn Coe and has two daughters, Lindsay and Erica.