I am a physicist / materials scientist, currently the director of the Argonne Microelectronics Institute and a staff scientist at Argonne National Laboratory’s Applied Materials Division.

My current research insterests are in the following areas:

  • The physics and chemistry of growth, and the relationship between surface kinetics, structure, and properties of materials. Basically how stuff is made (and unmade), from fundamental physics to manufacturing. My research in this area leverages simulations, machine learning/AI, and in-situ characterization techniques to explore fundamental questions, accelerate discovery and its transition to manufacturing. I have focused primarily on atomic layer deposition, a thin film growth technique that is widely used in microelectronics and for energy applications. On the AI side, I am very interested in how we can integrate AI with experiments and simulations in ways that really make sense, and how we can evaluate the potential and limitations that AI has in scientific research.

  • Microelectronics: it requires the ability to control the synthesis of materials with atomic precision and with unprecedented levels of purity. The ability to synthesize high quality materials and interfaces has strong implications in domains such as AI and quantum computing. Also, how to enhance energy efficiency is critical for resource limited environments such as sensors and detectors, and to minimize the current and future impact of AI on the electric grid. In this area, neuromorphic computing and other post-moore approaches are promising, however the integration of emergent materials with current technologies (the so called CMOS+X) is hard and in many cases we don’t have clear design targets for emergent materials that ensure new capabilities that are not possible (or too costly) with current semiconductor technologies. In my research, I have used primarily the insect brain as a source of inspiration. You can check my Gilbreth lecture at the US National Academies of Engineering here.

  • Electronic materials, both their synthesis and the way their properties can be leveraged to fabricate novel devices in microelectronics, quantum computing, and for advanced sensing applications.

During my PhD and postdoctoral research I also developed some serious expertise in the following areas:

  • Plasma physics and plasma kinetics. My first love. Bringer of twisty magnetic lines and reactive noble gas atoms. Killer of surfaces and enabler of computer chips.
  • The interaction and scattering of electromagnetic fields and in particular light with matter, including spectroscopic ellipsometry and metamaterials.

I am a strong advocate of open source software. It features strongly in my work and I have developed and released as open source a number of tools for scientific and machine learning applications. Check my github profile.

Things that you can find on this site (see the content sidebar):

Other sites (in Spanish):