Responsibilities:Led development of epitaxial piezoelectric single crystal materials required for the fabrication of high performance single crystal RF filter devices:- Developed state of the art single crystal III-N piezoelectric materials for emerging 5G device applications.- Specification, negotiation, purchase, installation, qualification and release to manufacturing for critical capital equipment used in single crystal materials production.- Define and execute strategy for building company’s Intellectual Property (IP) portfolio.Significant Accomplishments:- Developed epitaxial materials capable of state-of-the-art RF filter performance with high-power handling capability, in excess of 40 dBm (10 Watts) at resonant frequencies above 3.5 GHz.- Established roadmaps for technology development, New Technology Introduction (NTI) and New Product Introduction (NPI) for first of their kind Bulk Acoustic Wave (BAW) commercial products utilizing single crystal Aluminum Nitride materials.- Built vertically integrated IP portfolio encompassing platform technologies through application specific uses, currently 18 granted patents with 40+ applications in process.- Served as key member of senior management team, reporting to CEO. Report to Board of Directors on quarterly basis, engaging in all aspects of strategy / tactics for technical direction of the company.

Directed, supervised companywide engineering programs aimed at commercializing Aluminum Nitride (AIN) based LED technology: - Led single crystal AIN bulk growth initiatives i.e. source material formation, seed crystal generation, boule growth, programs focused on expansion of substrate diameter. - Supervision of all substrate fabrication operations to process single crystal AIN boules into substrates suitable for epitaxial growth; sawing and singulation, surface grinding and lapping operations, Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) of substrates. - Developed, reduction to practice of pseudomorphic epitaxial growth technique for UV LED structures grown on native AIN substrates resulting in lowest dislocation density layers in industry, enabling best-in-class LEDs to be brought to market. - Demonstrated epitaxy process improvements which yielded dramatic increase in internal quantum efficiency (IQE) of UV LED structures and 100X increase in device output power. - Equipment scale-up and facility improvements required for transition from R&D based startup to a mid-size manufacturing operation.

Epitaxial growth and optimization of AlGaN based wide band gap materials for optoelectronic device applications via Organometallic Vapor Phase Epitaxy (OMVPE). Specific materials include the (Al, Ga, N) alloys grown on polar and non-polar AlN substrates.Oversee the bulk growth of AlN for UV-C LED based devices.Direct both bulk and epitaxial material growth efforts including: designing material experiments (DOE), creating growth recipes, scheduling runs, tracking of statistical process control (SPC) data, managing substrate and finished wafer inventory, analyzing material data and correlating to device performance metrics.Responsible for database migration from Access databases to SQL server.

Developed technology for the epitaxial growth and optimization of GaN based devices via Organometallic Vapor Phase Epitaxy (OMVPE) and Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) growth technologies.Delivered state of the art AlGaN/GaN epitaxial material by device level performance in excess of 8 W/mm at 48V drain bias with over 65% Power Added Efficiency at 2.14 GHz while ramping from prototype to pilot production quantities.Directed material growth efforts including: designing material experiments (DOE), creating growth recipes, scheduling of epi runs, tracking of statistical process control (SPC) data, managing SiC substrate and finished GaN wafer inventory, analyzing material data and correlating to device performance metrics.Formed and managed team of technical staff responsible for incoming materials characterization.Communicated with device and reliability teams to inform of status of growth efforts as well as coordinate materials development for optimal device performance.

Principal investigator and program manager for $1.7M Air Force Research Laboratories (AFRL) research contract. Program was focused on relating epitaxial material quality to device performance and reliability, and creating a robust backside process technology for Gallium Nitride HEMT RF device performance and reliability. This program yielded RFMD’s first backside via devices which demonstrated a >2dB improvement in gain over the standard process.Principal investigator and program manager for $1M Air Force research sub-contract. Focus of program was to understand the effects of SiC substrate related defects on GaN HEMT RF device performance and reliability.

Performed epitaxial growth and optimization of wide band gap electronic materials for RF device applications via Flow Modulation Organometallic Vapor Phase Epitaxy (FM-OMVPE). Specific materials include the (Al, Ga, In – N) alloys grown on sapphire, SiC, and Si substrates.Tested and evaluated device level data for correlation to materials related issues such as dislocation densities, surface quality, GaN buffer quality, and various other epi growth parameters.OMVPE tool hardware design/evaluation. Act as part of a team responsible for design, construction, implementation, and evaluation of new system hardware to improve both thickness and compositional uniformity of above materials on custom built OMVPE reactor.Characterized material by X-ray Diffraction, Photoluminescence, C-V measurement, Hall Effect measurements, SEM analysis, and Atomic Force Microscopy to determine quality.

Key contributor responsible for $4.2 Million DARPA award for the “Wide Bandgap Materials and Devices” Phase I initiative. The program advanced state of the art uniformities for AlGaN/GaN based HEMT devices, particularly AlGaN barrier thickness and composition.Maintained Emcore D-180 system for material growth including: maintenance and scheduling, operation, and upgrades.Developed new GaN MOCVD reactor technologies for improved growth of high aluminum content III-N materials in both research and production scale reactors.Designed and optimized processes that maximized the output power of GaN based light emitting diodes (LED’s). Demonstrated overall performance improvement in excess of 50%.Developed contacts via e-beam metal deposition for LED, HBT, Photodiode, and Magnetoresistive sensor devices.Developed advanced GaN device separation technology.Electrical testing and disposition of InSb magnetoresistive devices.