Chris Palmstrøm

Bio

Professor Chris Palmstrom, one of the world's leading researchers of electronic materials, joined the ECE faculty at UCSB in the Fall of '07. Born in Norway, Palmstrom received his PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Leeds (England) in 1979. After five years of research on semiconductor materials and contact technologies at Cornell, he joined Bellcore in 1985. There, he did groundbreaking research on semiconductor surfaces, semiconductor doping, polymer/polymer diffusion and the molecular beam epitaxial growth of metal/semiconductor heterostructures. In 1994, Dr. Palmstrom went to the University of Minnesota, where he soon became a leading researcher in several fields, including new spintronic materials that combine the functions of electronic and magnetic manipulation and storage of information. In 2004 he became the Amundson Chair Professor. In 2007 he joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research has emphasized metallization of semiconductors, Heusler compounds, dissimilar materials epitaxial growth, thin film analysis, and molecular beam and chemical beam epitaxial growth of III-V semiconductor heterostructures, metallic compounds, metal oxides, multifunctional, magnetic, thermoelectric, and spintronic materials, and superconductors. His current research focuses on epitaxial growth of Quantum Materials including Heusler compounds and heterostructures and superconductor/III-V semiconductor heterostructures for Quantum Devices. In 2015 he received the North American MBE Innovator Award and was made a DOD National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellow. In 2018 he received the David Adler Lectureship Award in the Field of Materials Physics. He is a Fellow of AVS, APS, and MRS.