Awardee Interviews | Biography: Scott A. Chambers

Scott A. Chambers

Scott Chambers
Scott A. Chambers
, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory “for pioneering contributions to understanding the origin and influence of heterogeneities, defects, and disorder in complex oxide epitaxial films and heterostructures”

Dr. Scott A. Chambers is a Laboratory Fellow and Lead Principal Investigator for the oxide epitaxial growth effort in the Physical and Computational Sciences Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He received his A.B. in chemistry/chemical physics from the University of California at San Diego and his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Oregon State University. His doctoral thesis focused on x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy of small molecules in the gas phase. He then taught chemistry and physics for eight years at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon and at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. During these years he developed active undergraduate-oriented research programs aimed at understanding atomistic and electronic structures for single crystal surfaces in ultrahigh vacuum with and without ultrathin adlayers. 
 
Dr. Chambers then moved to industry and for five years was a staff scientist at the Boeing High Technology Center in Seattle. While there he conducted fundamental research on inter-facial phenomena involving epitaxial films of Group IV and Group III-V semiconductors, as well as intermetallic compounds. This work focused on controlling structure and electronic properties at interfaces of these dissimilar materials via epitaxial stabilization, using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) as the deposition method of choice. 
 
In 1992, Dr. Chambers moved to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to initiate an effort in oxide heteroepitaxy in the newly conceived Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory. He and his group designed and procured several epitaxial growth chambers configured to deposit high-purity films of binary and complex oxides for a variety of scientific purposes. These include designer oxide mineral surfaces for fundamental surface and interface science investigations, as well as heterostructures involving complex oxides and conventional semiconductors for understanding the relationships between atomistic structure/composition and electronic, optical, magnetic and photochemical properties. A consistent theme in his research has been understanding the roles that defects play in influencing and even driving functional properties. To this end, he has employed a diverse set of analytical techniques in order to definitively characterize these complex systems. His goal has consistently been to develop defensible structure-composition-property relationships based on actual, as opposed to idealized, properties of epitaxial films and interfaces. Over the past decade, he has also extensively employed first-principles quantum mechanical calculations in his efforts. In 2004, he received the E.W. Mueller Award for outstanding achievements in surface science from the Laboratory for Surface Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Dr. Chambers is a Fellow of the AVS, the APS and the AAAS. He has authored or co-authored ~300 peer-reviewed journal publications and ~20 invited review articles and book chapters. He has served the AVS as chair of the Pacific Northwest Section, as a member of the Executive Committees of the Electronic Materials and Processing Division and the Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures Division, and as a judge for M. M. Traum Student Competition of the Surface Science Division.