Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) is a technique for epitaxial crystal growth using gaseous metalorganic chemicals as raw material. This method has numerous advantages, including the fact that it allows for high-speed, uniform film growth, and that manufacturing equipment can be scaled-up easily as the process does not require an ultra-high vacuum. The method is now an essential element in large-scale commercial production of various light-emitting diodes (LEDs), laser diodes, semiconductor heterojunction solar cells, and other semiconductor-based electronic and optical devices. Professor Russel Dean Dupuis has been involved in MOCVD technological development from the beginning, applying the technique to device manufacture, and was first to demonstrate continuous room-temperature operation of GaAs/AlGaAs double heterostructure semiconductor lasers, quantum well laser diodes, and high efficiency semiconductor solar cells.
The 1970s saw significant progress in research into large-scale integrated circuits using silicon and into compound semiconductor technologies with functions that cannot be achieved with silicon. In addition to MOCVD, a number of other semiconductor epitaxial growth techniques – including molecular beam epitaxy and liquid-phase epitaxy – were also being actively researched to determine how they could be applied to mass production. In 1977, Dupuis was the first to publish data confirming that the MOCVD process was capable of producing high-performance semiconductor heterostructure devices that could handle practical use. The breakthrough in his research came after remarkable advances in detailed analyses of crystal growth processes and the MOCVD reactor design. Dupuis built the MOCVD reactor system to be as clean and leak-tight as possible with custom-made, all-welded stainless-steel bubblers of his own design, and he also developed the first computer-controlled MOCVD low-dead-space reactor manifold. With those improvements, he was able to successfully fabricate high-quality, low impurity semiconductor epitaxial films, and heterojunctions with abrupt interface and suitable doping profiles. His pioneering work established MOCVD as the predominant large-scale commercial production technology for compound semiconductor devices.
Automated MOCVD systems are now used around the world in the production of compound semiconductor electronic and optical devices. MOCVD technologies already make up a major portion of the market, and as can be seen in the fact that lighting systems are rapidly being replaced with high-efficiency LEDs worldwide, there is little doubt that there is still room for significant growth.
It is for these reasons that we believe the achievements of Professor Russell Dean Dupuis make him worthy of recognition as the recipient of the 2025 Japan Prize honoring achievements in the fields of Materials Science and Production.
