RCEAS media exposure on the rise

Faculty and students in the RCEAS have drawn significant media attention recently.
Hwang’s breakthrough reported in APL and Compound Semiconductor
An article co-written by Jim Hwang, professor of electrical engineering and director of the Compound Semiconductor Technology Laboratory, was published in Applied Physics Letters and featured in the journal Compound Semiconductor.
The APL article, “GaN metal-oxide-semiconductor high-electron-mobility-transistor (HEMT) with atomic layer deposited Al2O3 as gate dielectric,” reported a breakthrough regarding the high gate leakage that limits the performance of GaN HEMTs for high-power radio-frequency applications.
The Compound Semiconductor article, “Al2O3 dielectric layer improves GaN HEMT reliability,” said, “A team from Agere Systems, ASM America and Lehigh University, has improved the reliability of GaN-based HEMTS by using atomic-layer deposition to insert a 16 nm-thick Al2O3 dielectric layer below the gate contact.”
Wei-xian Zhang co-edits ES&T issue
Wei-xian Zhang, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Dr. Barbara Karn of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Center for Environmental Research, were guest editors for the March issue of Environmental Science and Technology, the top journal in its field.
The March issue of ES&T was dedicated to nanotechnology research and environmentally responsible development of nanotechnology. Zhang and Karn chose the manuscripts for consideration and managed the review process for the 25 papers included in the issue.
In a guest column, Zhang and Karn said that global, nanotechnology-related industrial output was expected to exceed $1 trillion and employ more than 2 million people in the next 10-15 years. Growth in nanotechnology activity, they said, makes it urgent to learn more about the consequences of human and environmental exposure to nanoscale materials and about the fate, transport and transformation of those materials in the environment.
PRISM lauds Failure Analysis class
Students in Failure Analysis, a senior-level course taught by Arnold R. Marder, the R.D. Stout Distinguished Professor of materials science and engineering, were featured in the summer issue of PRISM, a publication of the American Society for Engineering Education.
The PRISM article, titled “Lessons from a Disaster,” described the students’ spring semester project, in which Marder’s class examined pieces of debris from the Columbia space shuttle, which was destroyed Feb. 1, 2003, upon re-entry to the earth’s atmosphere.
The Failure Analysis class, said the article, “makes use of the school’s leadership in electron and light optical microscopy.” Students in the class “are keenly supervised by Marder…and Arlan Benscoter, a world-class microscopist.”
TV-2 shines spotlight on Manufacturing Expo
The junior-level course in Manufacturing offered by the department of mechanical engineering and mechanics was featured April 29 in a report by Service Electric Cable TV’s Channel 2 in Allentown.
Students in the course, which is taught by Chuck Smith, professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics, teamed for the seventh year with science students from Broughal Middle School to design, make and race matchbox cars at the annual Manufacturing Expo. This year’s Expo received a generous gift from Tyco Electronics of Harrisburg, Pa.
MAV students featured in Morning Call
In a story titled “Little Aircraft, Lofty Hopes at Lehigh,” the Allentown Morning Call on May 15 described the efforts of six mechanical engineering students to prepare for the ninth-annual International Micro-Aerial Vehicle Competition in late May in Seoul, South Korea.
The students – seniors Rich Kurz, Angela Capece and Patrick Boyle and juniors Russ Newbold, Tom Gilronan and John Winter – succeeded in flying their 6-inch, 35-gram airplane for 15 minutes at the competition. The team was sponsored by Boeing Co.’s Philadelphia Division and supervised by Joachim Grenestedt, associate professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics.
WSJ shines light on Blum’s work with concealed-weapon detection
Rick Blum, the Robert W. Wieseman Chair in Electrical Engineering, was featured in April in an article titled “New Cameras Spot Concealed Weapons” that ran on the Dow Jones newswire and also in The Wall Street Journal.
The article described Blum’s efforts over the past decade to fuse iImage-fusion software developed by Blum has been licensed to the Bethlehem startup firm SuperVision Technologies Inc., which envisions using the technology for convenience store security, the article said.