Eli Yablonovitch

Professor

Research Areas

• Physical Electronics (PHY)
• Optoelectronics, high speed optical communications, photonic crystals at optical and microwave frequencies, the milli-Volt switch, optical antennas and solar cells

Research Centers

• Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science (E3S)

Teaching Schedule (Spring 2012)

• EE 117. Electromagnetic Fields and Waves, MWF 10-11A, 237 Cory

Biography

Eli Yablonovitch is the Director of the NSF Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science (E ³S), a multi-University Center based at Berkeley. He received his Ph.d. degree in Applied Physics from Harvard University in 1972. He worked for two years at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and then became a professor of Applied Physics at Harvard. In 1979 he joined Exxon to do research on photovoltaic solar energy. Then in 1984, he joined Bell Communications Research, where he was a Distinguished Member of Staff, and also Director of Solid-State Physics Research. In 1992 he joined the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was the Northrop-Grumman Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering. Then in 2007 he became Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, where he holds the James & Katherine Lau Chair in Engineering. Prof. Yablonovitch is a Fellow of the IEEE, the Optical Society of America and the American Physical Society. He is a Life Member of Eta Kappa Nu, and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded the Adolf Lomb Medal, the W. Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, the R.W. Wood Prize, the Julius Springer Prize, and the Mountbatten Medal. He also has an honorary Ph.d. from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm Sweden. In his photovoltaic research, Yablonovitch introduced the 4n ² light-trapping factor that is used commercially in almost all high performance solar cells. Yablonovitch introduced the idea that strained semiconductor lasers could have superior performance due to reduced valence band (hole) effective mass. Today, almost all semiconductor lasers use this concept, including telecommunications lasers, DVD players, and red laser pointers. Yablonovitch is regarded as one of the Fathers of the Photonic BandGap concept, and coined the term "Photonic Crystal".

Selected Publications

• M. Xiao, I. Martin, E. Yablonovitch, and H. W. Jiang, "Electrical detection of the spin resonance of a single electron in a silicon field-effect transistor," Nature, vol. 430, no. 6998, pp. 435-439, July 2004.
• E. Yablonovitch, H. W. Jiang, H. Kosaka, H. D. Robinson, D. S. Rao, and T. Szkopek, "Optoelectronic quantum telecommunications based on spins in semiconductors (Invited Paper)," Proc. IEEE, vol. 91, no. 5, pp. 761-780, May 2003.
• H. Kosaka, D. S. Rao, H. D. Robinson, P. Bandaru, K. Makita, and E. Yablonovitch, "Single photoelectron trapping, storage, and detection in a field effect transistor," Physical Review B: Condensed Matter and Materials in Physics, vol. 67, no. 4, pp. 045104/1-5, Jan. 2003.
• E. Yablonovitch, "Photonic crystals: Semiconductors of light," Scientific American, vol. 285, no. 6, pp. 47-55, Dec. 2001.
• I. Gontijo, M. Boroditsky, E. Yablonovitch, S. Keller, U. K. Mishra, and S. P. DenBaars, "Coupling of InGaN quantum-well photoluminescence to silver surface plasmons," Physical Review B: Condensed Matter and Materials in Physics, vol. 60, no. 16, pp. 11564-1156, Oct. 1999.