Departmental Seminar – Professor Kevin Pipe

Temperature is strongly correlated with the performance and reliability of electronic devices, and is increasingly important as devices scale to smaller size, higher power, and higher frequency. This talk will explore thermal issues that arise in optoelectronic devices such as semiconductor lasers in particular, describing the mechanisms that lead to heat generation as well as the effects of increased temperature on device performance and reliability. Strategies for thermal management will be examined, including advanced heat sinks and integrated thermoelectric coolers. Measurement tools for imaging temperature in devices with micron and submicron resolution will also be presented, including microthermocouple probes, CCD-based thermoreflectance microscopy, and AFM-based scanning thermal microscopy. Finally, methods for temperature-based tuning of optoelectronic device parameters such as wavelength will be discussed, as well as thermal transport issues that arise in organic optoelectronic devices.
Kevin Pipe received bachelor’s (S.B. EECS 1999), master’s (M.Eng. EECS 1999) and doctoral (Ph.D. EE 2004) degrees from MIT, and afterwards joined the UM Mechanical Engineering Department as an assistant professor, with a courtesy appointment in EECS. His research interests include nanoscale thermal transport in materials and devices, submicron thermal imaging techniques such as thermoreflectance and scanning thermal microscopy, nanostructured thermoelectric materials, sub-wavelength optical microscopy tools, load-bearing energy-harvesting materials, photovoltaic devices, photonic integrated circuits, and organic and hybrid organic/inorganic devices.