September 25, 2010
By Benjamin White

An outmoded and virtually forgotten piece of machinery will receive a state-of-the-art facelift this year, thanks to NQPI's Dr. Savas Kaya.
OU's metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) system grew gallium nitride, an essential material for optoelectronics such as Blu-Ray lasers and delicate sensors for years, but recently it has lain dormant, taking up an entire room in Stocker Center. The 15-year-old machine was to be retired until Kaya and Dr. Wojciech Jadwisienczak, both of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, decided to apply for funding to fix the aging giant.

Ohio University awarded Kaya, in his ninth year at the school, $30,000 through the 1804 Fund, which will be used for the hardware updates. The other benefactors that includes the NQPI, CMSS Program and the College of Engineering will provide additional resources to support of a post-doctoral research scientist who will be in charge of testing and tweaking the MOCVD system to perfection and training his successor.
The upgraded MOCVD system will be able to produce zinc oxide as well as gallium nitride. ZnO, according to Dr. Kaya, is easier to grow and makes possible a wider variety of experiments, including those requiring finer nanostructures and work in spintronics. The machine's decrepit control center, originally a PC from the early 1990s, will be replaced by a high-end computer with an upgraded data acquisition interface and software.

“It'll make it more crispy and smooth,” explained Kaya, who compared the project with tuning up an old Pontiac GTO.
Dr. Kaya plans to buy the substrates required to grown zinc oxide and gallium nitrate instead of building them from scratch in order to devote more time to research. The annual cost of running the MOCVD system will fall between $10,000 and $20,000.
The semiconducting materials produced by the MOCVD system will be used in research along with the plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) system recently acquired by the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science's photonic sensors group. The combination of the semiconducting and insulating films grown in these complementary machines should “immensely benefit” OU in funding and recognition.

Hardware upgrades will be completed by spring 2011