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Jon is a 5th year PhD candidate in ECE, studying MBE growth and transport of Ga2O3 and related alloys. He is a 2019 recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) and a 2021 recipient of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Fellowship. Prior to joining the Jena-Xing group, Jon worked at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) focusing on device fabrication and testing of GaN and Ga2O3 devices. At Cornell, he has continued his collaborations with former collogues as a member of the ACCESS Center – a joint center between AFRL and Cornell devoted to the exploration of Ga2O3.

Jon’s research is on both the beta-phase and the alpha-phase of Ga2O3, with each phase having unique properties. The beta-phase is most studied due to its thermodynamic stability. In contrast, the alpha-phase has a larger bandgap, but due to its instability is a challenging material to grow and study. A former visitor to the Jena-Xing group, Dr. Riena Jinno, demonstrated the first growth of the alpha-phase by MBE and successfully alloyed it with Al – eventually demonstrating the epitaxial growth of Al2O3. However, it was observed that the alpha-Ga2O3 films would become unstable and convert to the stable beta-phase upon moderate annealing. Jon demonstrated for the first time, the stabilization of these films under high temperature anneals. This work was presented in 2021 at EMC, for which Jon was awarded the Best Student Presentation Award. This work was extended – resulting in an APL Editor’s Pick paper.

This work contributes to Jon’s goal of achieving a high degree of doping control in MBE grown Ga2O3.

This work and other ongoing work of Jon’s involves researchers in Germany (Patrick Vogt and Martin Eickhoff), AFRL (Kelson Chabak, Shin Mou, Andy Green, and Adam Neal), and ACCESS faculty at Cornell (Darrell Schlom, Mike Thompson, David Muller & Farhan Rana), in addition to members of the Jena-Xing group.