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DARIN LEONHARDT |
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I received by bachelors degree from
the Chemical and Nuclear Engineering department at UNM in 2005, and
continued in that department for graduate school advised by Sang
Han. My first year of graduate school largely involved the design
and building of an MBE machine to study the growth of germanium
films on silicon. My main interest is studying the kinetics and
thermodynamics at the interface between different crystalline
materials. Things get very interesting at the nanoscale in this
area where the physical properties are different from those in the
bulk of the materials, and we study this using a variety of surface
science techniques. This knowledge is then applied to the design
of cheap engineered substrates for growing devices such as
multi-junction solar cells and high speed transistors. Therefore,
my Ph.D will be one half materials engineering, and one half device
work, and this suits me well because I tend to like a broad range of
activities. I really like the interdisciplinary approach of the
IGERT program because it exposes you to ideas and techniques from
other disciplines that can be used to solve long standing problems
in your own field, or try unique approaches to problems. After
completing my Ph.D, I would like to work at one of the national
labs, which I think is a good balance between academia and industry. |
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