News Bureau | University of Illinois

Illinois professor to receive National Medal of Technology

James E. Kloeppel, Physical Sciences Editor
217-244-1073; kloeppel@illinois.edu

10/22/03

Nick Holonyak, next to President George Bush, right, and his two former students and fellow recipients of the National Medal of Technology at the White House ceremony Nov. 6.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Nick Holonyak Jr., a John Bardeen Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and two of his former graduate students, M. George Craford and Russell Dupuis, have each been selected as recipients of the 2002 National Medal of Technology.

President George W. Bush will present the medals at a White House ceremony on Nov. 6. During the ceremony, he also will award the National Medals of Science. The medals are the nation’s highest honor for work in science and technology.

Holonyak received the National Medal of Science in 1990. He is one of 13 Americans who have been awarded both the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology.

Photo by Bill Wiegand Nick Holonyak in his laboratory.

The technology medal recognizes Holonyak and his team for "contributions to the development and commercialization of light-emitting diode (LED) technology, with applications to digital displays, consumer electronics, automotive lighting, traffic signals, and general illumination."

"Millions of people at home, at work and on the road have benefited from the contributions of Professor Holonyak and his team," said Nancy Cantor, the chancellor of the Urbana campus. "Their light-emitting diode has made life easier, safer and more fun."
The National Medal of Technology recognizes men and women who embody the spirit of American innovation and have advanced the nation’s global competitiveness, the White House said in its news release. The award was established by Congress in 1980. To date, 146 recipients have been honored with the medal.

The son of Slavic immigrants who settled in Southern Illinois, Holonyak earned his bachelor’s degree in 1950, his master’s in 1951, and his doctorate in 1954, all in electrical engineering from Illinois. Holonyak was the first graduate student of two-time Nobel laureate John Bardeen, an Illinois professor who invented the transistor. An early researcher in semiconductor electronics, Holonyak gained eminence through his numerous inventions and contributions to advances in semiconductor materials and devices.

Before joining the Illinois faculty in 1963, Holonyak worked for Bell Telephone Labs, where he helped develop silicon-diffused transistor technology. Several years later, while at General Electric, he invented the first practical light-emitting diode and the first semiconductor laser to operate in the visible spectrum. He also developed the first electronic devices in III-V compound semiconductor alloys (III and V referring to places in the periodic table of the elements), and is the inventor of the basic silicon device used in household light-dimmer switches.

At Illinois, Holonyak and his students demonstrated the first quantum-well laser, creating a practical laser for fiber-optic communications, compact disc players, medical diagnosis, surgery, ophthalmology and many other applications.

In the early 1980s, his group introduced impurity-induced layer disordering, which converts layers of a semiconductor structure into an alloy that has important electronic properties. In one use, this discovery solved the problem of a laser’s low reliability. Such lasers exhibit enhanced performance and durability, making them ideal for DVD players and other optical storage equipment.

During the last decade, Holonyak and his students invented a process that enables the formation of high-quality oxide layers on any aluminum-bearing III-V compound semiconductor. The oxide process has had a major impact on vertical-cavity surface emitting lasers, making them practical for such applications as optical and data communications. His more recent research focuses on coupling quantum-dot lasers to quantum-well lasers.

Among Holonyak’s many awards are the Global Energy Prize from Russia (2003), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honor (2003), the Frederic Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America (2001), the Japan Prize (1995), the National Academy of Sciences’ Award for the Industrial Application of Science (1993 and the Optical Society’s Charles Hard Townes Award (1992). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, the IEEE, the Optical Society of America and is a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Seven of his 60 doctoral students are members of the National Academy of Engineering.

Craford is the chief technology officer of LumiLeds Lighting in San Jose, Calif.; Dupuis is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.