Nathan Palmquist Email & Phone Number

I am a graduate student in the Materials Department at UC Santa Barbara developing visible wavelength vertical cavity lasers (VCSELs) with hopeful applications in solid-state lighting, and high-speed data transmission (LiFi). My significant accomplishments to date:-I demonstrated CW electrically injected nonpolar violet GaN VCSELs using a novel topside monolithic GaN curved lens, buried tunnel junction aperture, and bottomside nanoporous (NP) GaN DBR. This is the world's first topside GaN lens demonstration, and UCSB's first curved lens and NP DBR demonstrations. Recently, I showed increased output power by using a dielectric lens. -I developed and optimized the material growth and cleanroom fabrication processes for GaN curved lenses, nanoporous GaN DBRs, and ultra-long cavity VCSELs. Additionally, I transitioned my group's VCSEL fabrication process from the contact aligner (~2micron alignment tolerance) to the Heidelberg maskless aligner (500nm alignment tolerance). The development of the NP DBR and transition to the Heidelberg maskless aligner increased device yields from 1-10% to 80%+ compared to the original process flow.-I developed a computational method based on thin-film interference engineering and multiobjective optimization to fabricate solar cell devices with specific reflectance spectra and optimized performance. My work led to three conference proceedings and one publication.Google Scholar (complete publication list):https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0YqHF6AAAAAJ&hl=en

Listed skills include Matlab, Nanomaterials, Public Speaking, Photovoltaics, and 10 others.

• 

  Cleanroom Processing Engineer

  Praevium Research, Inc.

  Apr 2024 - Present - Goleta, California, United States

  -Developing novel tunable MEMS VCSEL designs. Focus on improving single mode output power, tuning range, and other performance characteristics.-Actively exploring new material classes to expand accessible wavelength regimes.

• 

  The Johns Hopkins University

  3.45