(HPCWire) David Graves, an internationally-known chemical engineer, will become the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s (PPPL) first associate laboratory director for Low-Temperature Plasma Surface Interactions, effective June 1. This new research enterprise will explore plasma applications in nanotechnology for everything from semiconductor manufacturing to the next generation of super-fast quantum computers.
Graves, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1986, is an expert in plasma applications in semiconductor manufacturing. He will likely begin his new position from his home in Lafayette, California, in the East Bay region of San Francisco.
He will lead a collaborative research effort to not only understand and measure how plasma is used in the manufacture of computer chips, but also to explore how plasma could be used to help fabricate powerful quantum computing devices over the next decade.
“This is the apex of our thrust into becoming a multipurpose lab,” said Steve Cowley, PPPL director, who recruited Graves. “Working with Princeton University, and with industry and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), we are going to make a big push to do research that will help us understand how you can manufacture at the scale of a nanometer.” A nanometer, one-billionth of a meter, is about ten thousand times less than the width of a human hair.
David Graves to Head New Research at PPPL for Plasma Applications in Industry and Quantum Information Science
