01/25/2022
By Joanne Gagnon-Ketchen

The Physics colloquium will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 26 from 4 to 5 p.m.
Location: Virtual (Contact Joanne GagnonKetchen for invitation)

Joel Therrien, Associate Professor, Associate Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell will give a talk on "A Novel Carbon Allotrope Grown via Molecularly Templated CVD."

Abstract: Conventional wisdom in synthesizing carbon compounds using Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) tells us that the high temperatures used will decompose any hydrocarbon used in the process down to elemental carbon from which various carbon forms can be grown: graphene/graphite, diamond and amorphous carbon to name a few. Based on prior work with growing graphitic carbon-nitride our group hypothesized that it should be possible to avoid the complete breakdown of these precursor molecules opening the possibility to synthesize crystalline structures of carbon that are not typically thermodynamically favored. After an introduction to CVD and the concept of molecular templating a novel crystalline form of carbon synthesized using this process will be presented with its novel features such as high hardness, optical reflectivity, metallic conductivity and ferromagnetism. 

Bio: Joel Therrien received his Doctorate in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2002, and his bachelor’s in physics from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 1996. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UML, while also serving as Associate Chair for MS programs.  Therrien’s research focuses on Nanotechnology, 2-D materials, Device Physics, Sensors, Biosensors, Nanotoxicology, Nanoelectronic Devices, Scanning Probe Microscopy, Wide badgap semiconductors and sensors. Therrien has co-authored more than 30 papers and received grant and contract funding from several sources, including the National Science Foundation.