The Medard W. Welch Award was established in 1969 to commemorate the pioneering efforts of M.W. Welch in founding and supporting AVS. It is presented to recognize and encourage outstanding research in the fields of interest to AVS. The award consists of a cash award, a struck gold medal, a certificate, and an honorary lectureship at a regular session of the International Symposium.
 

Dr. John C. Hemminger, University of California, Irvine, “for outstanding contributions to the development of quantitative, molecular level understanding of many important interfacial processes, especially those related to atmospheric chemistry.”

John C. Hemminger received his B.S. degree (Magna Cum Laude) in Chemistry from the University of California, Irvine in 1971. His undergraduate research resulted in the discovery of the phenomenon of pre-dissociation in the photochemistry of cyclic ketones. His graduate work was carried out at Harvard University under the direction of Professor Willam A. Klemperer. He received his M.S. degree in Chemistry in 1973 and the Ph.D. degree in Chemical Physics in 1976. His Ph.D. thesis described the first experiments involving the coupling of ultra-high resolution visible lasers with molecular beam spectroscopy experiments, resulting in the some of the highest resolution optical spectra of molecules to date. He was awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in 1976 and did postdoctoral work with Professors Gabor A. Somorjai and Earl Muetterties at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory during the period 1976-1978.

After the completion of his postdoctoral studies in 1978, he was appointed to the faculty in Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine and was promoted to Full Professor in 1987. He was founding director of the Institute for Surface and Interface Science at the University of California, Irvine. He has Chaired the DOE Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee since 2003. He has been active in AVS and served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Surface Science Division from 1992 to 1995 and as Chair of the Division in 1995. In 2006, he was elected as Chair Elect of the Chemistry section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Physical Chemistry, Surface Science and Surface Science Reports.

His research focus has been on the quantitative study of complex molecular processes at surfaces and interfaces. His group provided the first measurements of the residual enhancements of Raman signals for adsorbed molecules on flat metal surfaces in 1981. He pioneered the development of laser induced desorption coupled with Fourier transform mass spectrometry as a quantitative method for the identification of molecular reaction intermediates on surfaces and surface reaction kinetics. In collaboration with the research group of George Comsa he published some of the first examples of using variable temperature STM techniques to obtain molecular level images of surface reactions on metals. His group discovered that photoxidation of alkanethiols could be used to spatially pattern self-assembled monolayers on gold. His recent work has focused on nanometer scale modification of surfaces and the resultant impact on surface properties and reaction processes as well as surface chemistry relevant to interfacial chemistry in the environment. By utilizing XPS methods at the ALS synchrotron, his group and collaborators have been able to quantitatively probe the composition of the liquid/vapor interface of solutions-with particular emphasis on systems that model the surface chemistry of aerosols in the atmosphere.

Professor Hemminger has graduated more than 35 Ph.D. students and mentored more than 25 postdoctoral fellows since joining the faculty at UCI. He is the author of over 150 peer reviewed scientific papers in the fields of surface chemistry and physics and molecular spectroscopy.
He is a Fellow of AVS, the APS, and the AAAS. He received an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist award. He received the ACS Arthur W. Adamson Award in 2004.
ctron Spectroscopy and Structure) and as chair or member of various governing or review committees.

The Albert Nerken Award was established in 1984 by Veeco Instruments, Inc. in recognition of its founder, Albert Nerken, a founding member of AVS, and his early work in the field of high vacuum and leak detection, and contributions to the commercial development of that instrumentation. It is presented to recognize outstanding contributions to the solution of technological problems in areas of interest to AVS. The award consists of a cash award and a certificate.
 

Dr. Siegfried Hofmann, Max-Planck Institute for Metals Research, “for seminal contributions to the quantitative characterization of thin films and interfaces, particularly planar nanostructures, by sputter depth profiling.”

Siegfried Hofmann received a Ph.D. in Physics from the Technical University in Munich, Germany in 1968 and joined the Max-Planck-Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart, where he established the first research laboratory on Applied Surface and Interface Analysis in Materials Science in Germany in 1972. Systematic work on depth profiling of bilayer and multilayer structures in nanometer dimensions resulted in an improved knowledge of the optimum experimental conditions for acquisition and interpretation of sputter depth profiles. With various coworkers, he showed the important influence of surface roughness on depth resolution using Ni/Cr multilayers and developed a generalized model of oxide sputtering that took account of cation mass and surface bonding. These fundamental studies promoted the development and effective utilization of standard reference materials for depth profiling (Ta2O5 by NPL, Ni/Cr by NIST). In 1986 he was appointed to adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Hohenheim-Stuttgart.

Beginning in the early 1990’s, Siegfried performed sputter depth profiling measurements with high depth resolution on GaAs/AlAs superlattice planar nanostructures used in optoelectronics, and Si/Ge multilayer structures. The measurements led to the development of a completely new model of quantitative depth profiling, the so-called MRI model based on the separate contributions of ion-induced atomic Mixing, surface Roughness, and the Information depth for the detected Auger electrons. Comparisons of measured depth profiles with simulations from the MRI model led to more detailed insights into compositional variations in the vicinity of interfaces. These successes motivated him to develop software so that other scientists could conveniently apply the MRI model to sputter depth profiling applications in their own laboratories. This software is now incorporated in the COMPRO package that is available without charge from the web site of the Surface Analysis Society of Japan. The MRI software was developed while Siegfried was a research director at the National Research Institute of Metals (now NIMS) in Tsukuba, Japan, and was recognized by a prize from the Japanese Minister of Science and Technology in 1998. The MRI model has been further refined and applied in recent work.

Another important area of Siegfried’s research has been the study of surface and interfacial segregation. An early detailed study of the kinetics of surface segregation of Sn on Cu showed the power of this new approach for determining bulk diffusion coefficients. Grain-boundary segregation was studied in later papers, particularly in Fe (Si,P,C) bicrystals, and resulted in considerable progress in the understanding of competitive segregation for multicomponent systems and to a predictive model based on the newly established linear relation between enthalpy and entropy of grain-boundary segregation. His outstanding accomplishments in this area were recognized by the award of the Ernst Mach Medal of Merit in the Physical Sciences by the Czech Academy of Sciences in 2003.

Finally, Siegfried has utilized X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to investigate corrosion, passivation, and pitting corrosion in stainless steels. This work led to a new interpretation of the formation of passive layers by preferential dissolution of iron in iron-chromium alloys.

Siegfried is the author or co-author of about 300 publications, including nine review papers and book chapters on sputter depth profiling, six on surface and interface segregation, and one on characterization of coatings. Many of these publications are based on work performed jointly with other scientists, in particular with his most outstanding former doctorate students Anton Zalar (Ljubljana), Jose Maria Sanz (Madrid), Joachim Steffen (Mannheim) and Pavel Lejcek (Prague) who are still cooperating with him. His publications have had significant impacts, with over 3500 citations. The Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) selected Siegfried in 2002 as one of only 250 “highly cited authors” in Materials Science (http://highlycited.com). In 2005 he became “Fellow of AVS”.

Siegfried has served the larger scientific community as a member of many program committees for major meetings (including AVS National Symposia and the International Conference on Metallurgical Coatings and Thin Films), co-editor for the ICMCTF Proceedings, member of international groups (VAMAS, ISO/TC 201), chairman

The Gaede-Langmuir Award was established in 1977 by an endowing grant from Dr. Kenneth C.D. Hickman. It is presented to recognize and encourage outstanding discoveries and inventions in the sciences and technologies of interest to AVS. The award is conferred biennially as a suitable candidate may be identified. It consists of a cash award, a commemorative plaque stating the nature of the award, and an honorary lectureship at a regular session of the International Symposium.
 

Dr. Leonard J. Brillson, The Ohio State University, “for demonstration of the fundamental importance of semiconductor interfacial bonding, metallurgical reactions, and defect formation upon solid state material and device properties.

Leonard J. Brillson is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Professor of Physics, and Center for Materials Research Scholar at The Ohio State University, where he currently leads an interdisciplinary research effort in electronic materials. Prior to moving to academia, he held a number of management positions at Xerox Corporation’s Joseph C. Wilson Center for Research and Technology, where he directed the Materials Research Laboratory, one of several major research departments in Xerox’s Corporate Research Division, and had responsibility for Xerox’s long-range physical science and technology programs at the company’s research headquarters in Rochester, N.Y.

He completed his A.B. in Physics at Princeton University in 1967 and his Ph.D. in solid state physics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1972. He is a Fellow of the AVS, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a Fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a former Governing Board member of the American Institute of Physics. Dr. Brillson continues to maintain an interdisciplinary research program directed at the basic understanding and atomic-scale control of semiconductor interfaces and electrical contacts.

He is author of over 275 journal articles on solid-state physics and surface science, 6 book chapters, 2 edited books, 2 patents, and a citation classic monograph, “The Structure and Properties of Metal-Semiconductor Interfaces.” His work has received over 5,000 citations in professional journals. He has served as Associate Editor for Surface Science Magazine, the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology and, for over a decade, the Journal of Electronic Materials. Currently he directs and supervises a group of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and undergraduates who work in three state of-the-art laboratories that he developed.

As a scientist at Xerox Corporation, Dr. Brillson established the importance of interfacial reactions at metal-semiconductor interfaces and developed atomic-scale techniques to control the electronic barriers that form at their junction. Using surface science techniques to monitor interface bonding and composition as contacts are formed, atomic layer by layer, he demonstrated that chemical reactions are a common feature at metal-semiconductor interfaces, even at room temperature, that they could be characterized thermodynamically, and that the reacted layers and defects that resulted play a key role electronically. His current research group is engaged in a broad science and engineering program in the structure and properties of electronic materials interfaces, emphasizing compound semiconductors for high speed microelectronic and optoelectronic device structures, wide band gap semiconductors for sensor and display applications, and thin film dielectrics for insulating gate structures.

He has presented more than 90 invited lectures at national or international scientific conferences and has received numerous research awards, including Ohio State’s Lumley Research Award (twice), Xerox Corporation’s Outstanding Achievement Award, Surface Science Magazine’s Excellence Award, IEEE Columbus’ Technical Achievement Award, and Citation Classic recognition by the Institute for Scientific Information. He is married to the former Janice Lynn Coe and has two daughters, Lindsay and Erica.