Carl V. Thompson

Research

Professor Carl V. Thompson and his students carry out research on thin films and nanostructures for use in microsystems and nanosystems, especially electronic, electromechanical, and electrochemical systems. All projects focus on kinetic phenomena that control structure evolution and include both experiments and modeling. Research topics include templated solid-state dewetting of thin films and nanostructures for plasmonic and photonic devices, the reliability of GaN-based high electron mobility transistors and light emitting diodes, and interconnected reliability in both 2D and 3D integrated circuits, as well as heterogeneously integrated systems more broadly. Other recent research includes new materials and designs for integrated thin film batteries and morphological stability of single crystal nanowires.

Biography

Professor Thompson received a bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from MIT and an master’s and PhD in applied physics from Harvard University. He was an IBM postdoctoral fellow in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT and joined the DMSE faculty in 1983. He served as the president of the Materials Research Society in 1996, as the director of MIT’s Materials Processing Center from 2008 to 2017, and as the director of MIT’s Materials Research Laboratory from 2017 to 2023. Professor Thompson has also been active in MIT’s international programs and held visiting positions at Cambridge University, the Max Planck Institute for Metallurgy, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He has been a consultant for more than 30 companies, including IBM, DEC, Intel, and Motorola and other large companies, as well as a number of startups.