Stephen D. Hersee

Stephen D. Hersee
Professor

Honors and Distinctions: Gardner-Zemke Professor IEEE Fellow

Contact Information: (505) 272-7823

Degrees: PhD Brighton University, United Kingdom, 1975 BSc Brighton University, UK, 1972

With four invention disclosures filed in 2006-07 related to the growth and device applications of GaN nanowires, Stephen Hersee authored four invited papers and three journal papers on the topic in 2006. One of these was highlighted in Nature Nanotechnology’s August 2006 issue.

The process—invented by Dr. Hersee and two of his students, Xinyu Sun and Xin Wang—enables fabrication of uniform arrays of GaN nanowires such that the position, orientation, diameter and length of each nanowire is precisely controlled. A local startup company was launched in 2006 based on this technology, and two more companies have purchased an option to license it.

Dr. Hersee and his team are also investigating the effect of threading defects on high-brightness light-emitting diodes. They have developed a way to measure the dislocation density inside working devices, which is shedding light on how these defects affect the electrical and optical performance of high-brightness LEDs.

Dr. Hersee’s research is currently funded by DARPA, ARL and AFOSR. Dr. Hersee was named UNM’s Outstanding Teacher of the Year for 2001-02. He teaches courses in microelectronics, circuit analysis and semiconductor devices, and he currently serves as major advisor to three students. He holds eight patents and has published and presented more than 160 papers.