Carl V. Thompson
MRL Director
Stavros Salapatas Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
Research
Professor Thompson and his students carry out research on thin films and nanostructures for use in micro- and nano-systems, especially electronic, electromechanical and electrochemical systems. His group carries out basic research on structure evolution during deposition and post-deposition processing of thin films. The latter includes research on templated solid-state dewetting of thin films and nanostructures, for development of new patterning methods and for basic studies of capillary-driven morphological evolution. Prof. Thompson's group also carries out research on the mechanisms of carbon nanotube growth and metal-catalyzed etching for creation of semiconductor nanowire arrays. Carbon nanotubes are also used in research on metal-air batteries and capacitive desalination devices, and nanowires are used in research on solid state supercapacitors. Thin film Li-ion microbatteries and thermogalvanic energy harvesting devices for applications in autonomous microsystems are also under investigation.
Biography
Professor Thompson received an S.B. in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT and an S.M. and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard University. He was an IBM postdoctoral fellow in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT in 1982 and joined the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in 1983. Prof. Thompson was an SERC Fellow at Cambridge University from 1990 - 1991, a Humboldt Senior Scientist awardee at the Max Planck Institute for Metallurgy in Stuttgart Germany from 1997 - 1998, and a visiting scientist at the Institute for Applied Materials at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 2012. He served as the president of the Materials Research Society in 1996 and served on their council from 1991 - 1997. He has also been active in MIT’s programs in Singapore since 1998, including serving for 12 years as the co-Chair of the Program for Advanced Materials for Micro- and Nano-Systems of the Singapore-MIT Alliance. He was the Director of MIT’s Materials Processing Center from 2008 - 2017 and is currently the Director of MIT’s Materials Research Laboratory and Co-Director of the Skoltech Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage. Professor Thompson worked briefly for U.S. Steel and General Electric and has been a consultant for over 30 companies including DEC, IBM and Intel and other microelectronics companies as well as smaller enterprises based on microelectromechanical devices and systems. He has also worked with a number of legal firms. His group has collaborated in research with IBM, Intel, AMD, TI, Motorola, and Sematech. Professor Thompson’s research interests include structure evolution during processing of thin films and nanostructures, and incorporation of thin films and nanostructures into electronic, microelectromechanical and electrochemical devices and systems. Specific research topics include control of structure in single crystal and polycrystalline films and nanostructures; stress development, evolution and control in polycrystalline films and nanostructures; morphological evolution and stability of films and nanostructures, including templating of morphological instabilities as method for pattern formation; fabrication of thin film batteries using CMOS compatible materials and processes; and characterization and modeling of the reliability of IC interconnects and GaN-based HEMTs and LEDs.
Contact
Email: cthomp@mit.edu
Phone: 617-253-7652
Office: 13-2098
Website: https://mmns.scripts.mit.edu/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-v-thompson-829a111b6/
