Professor John W Steeds

My past research has been based largely on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and (convergent beam) electron diffraction.

However, I have recently embarked on a completely new activity concerned with the study of point defects and their complexes in wide-band-gap semiconductors, such as silicon carbide, diamond, and cubic boron carbide.I aim to understand, exploit, and develop the extremely sensitive method of low-temperature (~7K) photoluminescence microscopy for non-destructive evaluation and identification of defects in these materials.

Considerable international and national collaboration is involved. The defects may be grown-in or created by energy-selected irradiation of specimens in a specially adapted 300 kV TEM. The materials are of considerable interest for future applications in high-power, high-temperature, and high-frequency electronics and also for quantum information processing.