Personal statement
I use electron beams to interrogate the structure, defects and light emission from solids. Together with students and colleagues here at Strathclyde and from across the world, I work on new developments and novel applications of the scanning electron microscopy techniques of electron backscatter diffraction, electron channelling contrast imaging and cathodoluminescence imaging. In particular we have developed novel techniques to rapidly and non-destructively analyse defects in nitride semiconductors used for production of UV and visible LEDs and transistor structures.
I have taught solid state physics; biophysical instrumentation; medical physics; optical; electron and scanning probe microscopy; and public engagement of research. I am presently teaching Introduction to Astronomy; electromagnetism and mechanics. I teach in undergraduate laboratories and supervise student projects.
I am also committed to public engagement giving lectures, writing articles, running workshops, quizzes, street busking, leading science street tours and providing kits to schools. I am a past Vice President of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, I am an enthusiastic contributor to the Glasgow Science Festival and to Explorathon (European Researchers Night Scotland). I was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2014.
Research interests
Our research is driven by the need for rapid, non-destructive techniques to reveal and analyse defects in crystalline materials, in particular in nitride semiconductor thin films. III-nitride materials are presently the basis of a fast-growing, multi-billion dollar solid-state lighting industry and commercial AlGaN/GaN electronic devices are now in use in cell phone base stations, satellite communication systems and cable television networks. However, the ultimate performance of these nitride semiconductor based light emitters and electronic devices is limited by extended defects such as threading dislocations (TDs), partial dislocations (PDs), stacking faults (SFs) and grain boundaries (GBs). If we want to develop LEDs to be an effective replacement for the light bulb, or have sufficient power to purify water or develop efficient power electronics for electric vehicles, we need to eliminate these defects as they act as scattering centres for light and charge carriers and give rise to nonradiative recombination and to leakage currents, severely limiting device performance. The first step to this goal is the detection of these defects – we exploit electron channeling contrast imaging (ECCI) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) in a field emission scanning electron microscope to rapidly and non-destructively detect and analyze TDs, PDs, SFs, GBs and map crystal structure, texture, and strain with a lateral and depth resolution on the order of tens of nanometers.
We are involved in both the development and exploitation of the ECCI and EBSD techniques. For example, in collaboration with the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford and the National Physical Laboratory, we are developing new direct electron imaging detectors for electron backscatter diffraction. We are exploiting the digital complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor hybrid pixel detector, Timepix. Timepix is one of the outcomes of an international collaboration (Medipix) hosted at CERN, established to provide a solution for a range of problems in X-ray and gamma-ray imaging in hostile conditions. Using the Timepix allows digital direct electron detection and energy filtering; it enables electron backscatter diffraction patterns to be acquired with reduced noise and increased contrast, and an unprecedented increase in detail is observed in the patterns. This is allowing us to interrogate the fundamental physics of pattern formation and will enable, in the longer term, the application of the EBSD technique to be expanded to materials for which conventional EBSD analysis is not presently practicable. For more information see: Web pages of Semiconductor Spectroscopy and Devices Group.
Collaborators
We collaborate with researchers from around the globe including the Universities of Sheffield; Nottingham; Cambridge; Oxford; Bristol; Bath; Tyndall Institute/University College Cork; Academic Centre for Materials and Nanotechnology, AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland; CRHEA-CNRS, France; Technischen Universität Berlin; Ferdinand-Braun-Institut, Berlin; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA; and The National Physical Laboratory.
Professional activities
- Big Bounce 2021
- Contributor
- 13/10/2021
- Invited Talk: EMAG 2020 Microscopy Enabled by Direct Electron Detection (on-line). Title: Direct electron detectors for diffraction studies in the scanning electron microscope
- Speaker
- 6/7/2020
- Invited Talk: SPIE Photonics West Conference: Gallium Nitride Materials and Devices XV, US, February 2020. Title: Visualization of defects in nitride semiconductors by electron channeling.
- Speaker
- 4/2/2020
- Lecture at "Kilmarnock Engineering and Science Society"
- Speaker
- 3/12/2019
- STEMFest 2019
- Contributor
- 14/11/2019
- Invited talk:CAM-IES Workshop: Multi-Modal Characterisation of Energy Materials, UK, November 2019 Title: Investigating crystal structure, defects and luminescence from optoelectronic materials in the scanning electron microscope
- Speaker
- 6/11/2019
More professional activities
Projects
- Doctoral Training Partnership 2020-2021 University of Strathclyde | Powell, Megan
- Rossi, Alessandro (Principal Investigator) Trager-Cowan, Carol (Co-investigator) Powell, Megan (Research Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2021 - 01-Jan-2025
- Doctoral Training Partnership 2020-2021 University of Strathclyde | Hiller, Kieran
- Trager-Cowan, Carol (Principal Investigator) Bruckbauer, Jochen (Co-investigator) Hiller, Kieran (Research Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2020 - 01-Jan-2024
- UKRI Covid Allocation in support of Manufacturing of nano-engineered ill-nitride semiconductors
- Martin, Robert (Principal Investigator) Trager-Cowan, Carol (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2020 - 30-Jan-2021
- Doctoral Training Partnership 2018-19 University of Strathclyde | Waters, Dale
- Trager-Cowan, Carol (Principal Investigator) Martin, Robert (Co-investigator) Waters, Dale (Research Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2019 - 01-Jan-2025
- Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP 2016-2017 University of Strathclyde) | McDermott, Ryan
- Trager-Cowan, Carol (Principal Investigator) Martin, Robert (Co-investigator) McDermott, Ryan (Research Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2017 - 01-Jan-2021
- Quantitative non-destructive nanoscale characterisation of advanced materials
- Hourahine, Ben (Principal Investigator) Edwards, Paul (Co-investigator) Roper, Marc (Co-investigator) Trager-Cowan, Carol (Co-investigator) Gunasekar, Naresh (Research Co-investigator)
- "To satisfy the performance requirements for near term developments in electronic and optoelectronic devices will require pioneering materials growth, device fabrication and advances in characterisation techniques. The imminent arrival of devices a few atoms thick that are based on lighter materials such as graphene or boron nitride and also advanced silicon and diamond nano-structures. These devices pose new challenges to the currently available techniques for producing and understanding the resulting devices and how they fail. Optimising the performance of such devices will require a detailed understanding of extended structural defects and their influence on the properties of technologically relevant materials. These defects include threading dislocations and grain boundaries, and are often electrically active and so are strongly detrimental to the efficiency and lifetimes of nano-scale devices (a single badly-behaved defect can cause catastrophic device failure). These defects are especially problematic for devices such as silicon solar cells, advanced ultraviolet light emitting diodes, and advanced silicon carbide and gallium nitride based high power devices (used for efficient switching of large electrical currents or for high power microwave telecoms). For graphene and similar modern 2D materials, grain boundaries have significant impact on their properties as they easily span the whole size of devices.
Resolving all of these problems requires new characterisation techniques for imaging of extended defects which are simultaneously rapid to use, are non-destructive and are structurally definitive on the nanoscale. Electron channelling contrast imaging (ECCI) is an effective structural characterisation tool which allows rapid non-destructive visualisation of extended crystal defects in the scanning electron microscope. However ECCI is usually applied as a qualitative method of investigating nano-scale materials, has limitations on the smallest size features that it can resolve, and suffers from difficulties in interpreting the resulting images. This limits this technique's ability to work out the nature of defects in these advanced materials.
We will make use of new developments in energy resolving electron detectors, new advances in the modelling of electron beams with solids and the knowledge and experience of our research team and partners, to obtain a 6 fold improvement in the spatial resolution of the ECCI technique. This new energy-filtered way of making ECCI measurements will radically improve the quality of the information that can be obtained with this technique. We will couple our new capabilities to accurately measure and interpret images of defects to other advanced characterisation techniques. This will enable ECCI to be adopted as the technique of choice for non-destructive quantitative structural characterisation of defects in a wide range of important materials and provide a new technique to analyse the role of extended defects in electronic device failure." - 01-Jan-2017 - 30-Jan-2021
More projects
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