AVS 66th International Symposium & Exhibition
    Plasma Science and Technology Division Wednesday Sessions
       Session PS-WeA

Paper PS-WeA1
INVITED TALK: A Tribute to John W. Coburn

Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 2:20 pm, Room B130

Session: Commemorating the Career of John Coburn (ALL INVITED SESSION)
Presenter: David Graves, University of California at Berkeley
Correspondent: Click to Email
Dr. John W. Coburn was one of the most influential low temperature plasma and surface scientists of the 20th century. He passed away in San Jose, California on November 28, 2018. In this talk, I will summarize some of John's many contributions and his enormous impact on both fundamental understanding and applications associated with plasma-surface interactions, thin film deposition and etching. John was born in Vancouver, British Columbia and received his BS degree in Engineering Physics and his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. After his postdoctoral work at Simon Fraser University, John joined IBM Research (Almaden, California) in 1978. He worked at IBM for 25 years, and retired in 1993. John joined the AVS while still in graduate school and he served as the National AVS Treasurer for many years and in addition served as President in 1988. In 1994, John began to collaborate with me at UC Berkeley as a Senior Research Associate in the department of Chemical Engineering. He had a tremendous impact on me and my group over a period of over 20 years. This impact was both scientific and personal. In this talk, I describe some of John's most important work in non-equilibrium plasma science and plasma-surface interactions, with a special emphasis on the work he did at UC Berkeley with me and my co-workers.