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John Stickney

Distinguished Research Professor 2013

 

John Stickney, professor of chemistry, has received worldwide recognition for his contributions to the field of electrochemistry. He singlehandedly invented a method of producing extraordinarily thin semiconductors created one atomic layer at a time through a process he called electrochemical atomic layer epitaxy, or EC-ALE. He patented this approach and founded a company to market equipment for making materials by this process. The materials produced by EC-ALE are of a quality previously unmatched through traditional methods of electrodeposition, and they have great potential in a number of technological applications, including solar energy conversion, as specialty sensors, and for catalysis, the process of accelerating a chemical reaction by a catalyst. More recently, Stickney has been investigating how to electrodeposit the semiconductor germanium. Germanium is, in many respects, superior to silicon, which is presently used by industries to manufacture microprocessor chips and transistors.