Robert P. Devaty

 

Associate Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy

402 Allen Hall

412-624–9009, 9163(fax)

devaty@pitt.edu

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/people/fprofile.php?id=144

 

 

Robert Devaty’s research focuses on large bandgap semiconductors, particularly silicon carbide. The superior properties of SiC hold great promise for power devices with improved energy efficiency, as well as devices that operate at high temperature, high frequency and under harsh conditions. The work of the Large Bandgap Semiconductors Group (with Choyke) touches nano-science and technology in a number of ways. As an example, stacking fault and nano-polytype inclusions (See figure) are important because they degrade the behavior of power devices, but are also interesting systems in their own right as hetero-polytype quantum wells, with little or no lattice mismatch. In recent years, much effort has been devoted to the fabrication, investigation and applications of nanoporous SiC. For example, one collaboration is pursuing the use of porous SiC as a membrane for implantable biosensors. Another collaboration investigates the acoustic and vibrational properties of porous SiC using Brillouin and Raman spectroscopies. In both cases, effective medium models are applied to attempt to account for and understand the observed behavior.

 

 

  

 

 

  

 

3C SiC quantum well, thirteen Si-C bilayers thick (3.25 nm), in a 4H SiC    epitaxial layer (HRTEM image by Ute Kaiser, now at the University of Ulm).