You are invited to the third event of the Spring 2022 Sustainability Seminar Series, entitled “Semiconductors: Towards Carbon Negative Technologies of the Future” by two KAUST Professors, Thomas D. Anthopoulos and Xiaohang Li.
Tuesday, April 12
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Auditorium between B2 & 3 and Zoom
Join in person or register on Zoom
Abstract
Realizing carbon neutrality has become one of the most important goals of our modern societies. As most of the human activities continue to generate considerable amounts of carbon, achieving neutrality requires urgent development and deployment of carbon negative technologies. Since the transistor invention in 1947, semiconductor technologies have become the physical foundation of the 3rd and 4th industrial revolutions that have shaped our modern world. However, little is known of the fact that semiconductors are among the most carbon negative technologies the human has ever developed. One representative example is the semiconductor solar cell, which has recently emerged as one of the most important carbon negative technologies due to its key role in efficient generation of renewable energy.
Moreover, semiconductor technologies have drastically cut down energy consumption related to numerous other activities including computing, data storage, communication and lighting, among others. Continuous development of the semiconductor technologies will drive up the energy efficiency further, increasing the carbon negativity. In this talk, we are going to discuss how semiconductor technologies have and will contribute to the carbon neutrality.
About the speaker
Thomas D. Anthopoulos is a Professor of Material Science and Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. He received his B.Eng. and D.Phil. degrees from Staffordshire University in the UK. He then spent two years at the University of St. Andrews (UK), where he worked on organic semiconductors for application in light-emitting diodes before joining Philips Research Laboratories in The Netherlands to focus on printable microelectronics. From 2006 to 2017 he held faculty positions at Imperial College London (UK), first as an EPSRC Advanced Fellow and later as a Reader and full Professor of Experimental Physics. His research interests are diverse and cover the development and application of novel processing paradigms and the physics, chemistry & application of functional materials.
Xiaohang Li is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Applied Physics at KAUST. He obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology where he received the Institute’s highest graduate student honor, the Edison Prize. His research focuses on cutting-edge research on ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors for next-generation electronics and photonics. He has authored over 100 journal and 140 conference publications, and has over 35 issued and pending patents. He is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the Harold M. Manasevit Young Investigator Award from the American Association for Crystal Growth, the SPIE D. J. Lovell Scholarship, the IEEE Photonics Graduate Student Fellowship, the Georgia Tech 40 under 40 Award. He is an Associate Editor of Photonics Research and is a committee member of several leading conferences including IWN, EMC, and IC-MOVPE.
This event is open to the entire KAUST community and brought to you by Students for Sustainability, with the support of Graduate Events & Recreation and the Head of KAUST Sustainability, Dr. Ana Margarida Costa. Should you have any questions, please contact us at s.square@kaust.edu.sa.
