YURI SUZUKI
 
 

Yuri


Associate Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
380 Hearst Memorial Mining Building
phone: 510 643-0087
fax: 510 643 5792
e-mail: ysuzuki@berkeley.edu
A.B. 1989 (Harvard); Ph.D. 1995 (Stanford)

Biography

Suzuki carried out her doctoral research in the area of high-temperature superconductivity with a National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship and an ARCS Foundation Fellowship. In the fall of 1994, she joined AT&T Bell Laboratories (now Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies) as a Postdoctoral Member of Technical Staff. She joined the Cornell University faculty in January 1997. She is a member of the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Recently she received an ONR Young Investigator Award, an NSF CAREER award, the Robert Lansing Hardy Award from the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS), and a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship.

Research Interests

Magnetics
The research area of magnetics- both in fundamental science and device physics- has enabled the magnetic storage industry to continue to make significant technological advances. As miniaturization reaches its limit, new paradigms for information storage and transfer based on fundamentally new phenomena or new materials are necessary. My approach to research has been to develop new classes of magnetic oxide thin film materials (1) to understand the structure-property relationships of these novel materials, (2) to develop a fundamental understanding of magnetism at nanometer length scales in complex materials and (3) to fabricate spin devices based on these materials. A strong motivation for research in the nanometer regime is that magnetism at these length scales may be dominated by processes that are very different from those at macroscopic length scales. These processes may shed light on novel magnetic phenomena and have profound implications for the future of magnetic storage applications. The scienctific themes of my research currently include the development of new magnetic materials, new techniques for the formation of nanostructures and spin based devices.

Photonics
Through dielectric constant modulation, photonic bandgap crystals offer control of light propagation by the introduction of gaps in the density of electromagnetic states, analogous to energy bandgaps for electrons in a crystal lattice. Since photons offer greater speed, more information per unit time, and wider bandwidth compared with electrons, it is not surprising that optical components have found their way into semiconductor technology. However, the absence of an all-purpose optical component similar to the transistor in semiconductor electronics has prevented the revolutionary step toward an all-optical technology. To provide the building blocks for an optical analog of a transistor, many researchers have focused their efforts on fabricating photonic bandgap crystals. We are studying microphotonic structures that are predicted to give rise to a bandgap in the near infrared region.