
About the author
Arthur C. Gossard received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in physics from University of California, Berkeley. In his Ph.D. research at Berkeley, he observed the first nuclear magnetic resonance in a ferromagnetic material and discovered the enhancement of rf magnetic field at the nucleus caused by domain rotation and domain wall motion. He is professor of Materials and Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara.
His research involves the creation and study of nanoscale artificially structured materials. His special interests are molecular beam epitaxy, the growth of quantum wells, nanostructures and superlattices and their applications to high performance electrical and optical devices and the physics of low-dimensional structures.
In work at AT&T Bell Laboratories, he created the first alternate monolayer superlattices, the first selectively doped high-mobility heterostructures, and was the co-discoverer of the Nobel prize-winning fractional quantum Hall effect. He was also co-discoverer of the quantum-confined Stark effect and optical modulator. At UCSB, he pioneered the growth of epitaxial composites of metallic erbium arsenide and related rare-earth compound nanoparticles in semiconductor hosts. He developed improved thermoelectric materials for direct creation of electrical power from waste heat. And he produced semiconductor devices with increased electron-hole tunneling for creation of multicolor solar cells.
His work most recently produced high performance quantum dot lasers grown epitaxially on on-axis silicon substrates. This work has the potential to replace wires in computer chips with light beams.
He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the IEEE, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of the 1983 Oliver Buckley Condensed Matter Physics prize and recipient of the 2001 James McGroddy New Materials prize of the American Physical Society and the 2009 Al Cho International Molecular Beam Epitaxy Award. In 2017, he was awarded the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
Advances in Engineering featured article: Development of continuous-wave 1550 nm operated terahertz system