ECE RESEARCH FACULTY

T. Venky Venkatesan

Title: Research Professor
Areas/Affiliations: ECE, PHY
E-mail: venky@umd.edu
Phone: (301)405-7320
Office: 1364 Physics Bldg.

Website: http://squid.umd.edu/csrpage/people/faculty/venky/index.htm

Biography & Research:

Venky Venkatesan's group is one of the leading groups in the field of oxide based thin films research. A new field "Oxide Electronics" was christened to cover these areas of research. The research of Venkatesan today is focused in two distinct areas, novel magnetic phenomena in oxides (Diluted magnetic oxides and Multiferroics) and wide band gap oxides and nitrides (ZnMgO and AlN).

In the area of diluted magnetic semiconducting oxides (DMSO), Venkatesan's group is one of the most active ones and this group has identified over five different host systems in which magnetic dopants such as Co lead to ferromagnetism with Curie temperatures in excess of room temperature. Anomalous hall, electric field effect on magnetic properties and identification of a new EELs excitation signature have been some of the importanat results demonstrated by this research team. The results point to a new mechanism of ferromagnetic interaction based on oxygen vacancies. The nature of the ferromagnetism has been shown to be percolative in nature with an unusual inverse dependence of electronic transport on ferromagnetism.

In the area of wide bandgap Oxide materials, this group was the first to show the complete phase diagram of an alloy of ZnO and MgO, showing a single phase hexagonal phase from 0-40% Mg concentration and a cubic phase from 60-100% Mg concentration with mixed phases in between. The bandgap spanned is from 3.25-7.8eV and   is one of the largest spread in bandgap achievable in an alloy system, far exceeding the 6eV limit of the GaAlN system. With the recent observation of blue light emission from p-n junctions fabricated in the ZnO system, this alloy system assumes tremendous significance for the Blue LED market.

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