Tianrens' Blog: 05/05/07

Paul K Chu was born in Hong Kong and attended both primary and secondary school at St. Joseph's Anglo-Chinese School. He went to the United States at the age of 17 and was accepted to the honors program at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He was awarded the prestigious American Chemical Society (ACS) Student Fellowship and worked at New England Aquarium in Boston on trace metal analysis of seawater during the summer of 1976. He received his BS in mathematics (cum laude and phi beta kappa) from Ohio State in 1977 and went to graduate school at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He won the DuPont teaching award as a teaching assistant at Cornell in 1978 and joined the research group of Prof. George H Morrison of the Department of Chemistry. Prof. Morrison was one of the prominent figures in analytical chemistry having been involved with the Apollo moon expedition programs. Prof. Morrison was a winner of the ACS Analytical Chemistry Award and Editor-in-Chief of Analytical Chemistry, the premier journal in analytical chemistry published by the American Chemical Society. Under the supervision of Prof. Morrison and Prof. James W Mayer of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at Cornell, Paul conducted research on ion beam processing and characterization of semiconductors and received his MS and PhD in chemistry in 1979 and 1982, respectively.

Upon graduation, he joined Charles Evans & Associates in California which was a small company at that time but later became one of the biggest companies in the late 1980s in materials characterization. During the eight year span from 1982 to 1990, Paul was promoted 4 times and became one of the most recognized international figures in the area of secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). He was one of the organizers of the SIMS-VII conference in Monterey, California in 1989, and wrote the chapter on SIMS in “Encyclopedia of Materials Characterization”. In 1990, with the help of the parent company, Paul started his first company, Evans Asia, in Hong Kong / Taiwan / Singapore / China specializing in materials characterization and analytical equipment.

In 1996, he joined City University of Hong Kong as a faculty member and ventured into the new area of plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII). He obtained financial support from City University of Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, as well as Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) to establish the Plasma Laboratory in City University of Hong Kong. The Plasma Laboratory has emerged to be one of the most well known and versatile PIII facilities in the world, and Paul is recognized as one of the leading international figures in plasma-based materials engineering. He is the elected Chairman of the International Plasma-Based Ion Implantation Executive Committee which organizes the biannual International Workshop on Plasma-Based Ion Implantation and Deposition (PBII&D). He is also a member of the Ion Implantation Technology (IIT) International (Governing) Committee that organizes the biannual International Conference on Ion Implantation Technology.

Paul joined IEEE in 1997, became a senior member in 1999, and was elected Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2003 for his contributions to the understanding of plasma immersion ion implantation and deposition. He is very active in the IEEE serving as a member of the international advisory board of the IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS) from 1996 to 1998, Guest Editor of 3 special issues of IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science [vol. 34, no. 4 (2006); vol. 33, no. 4 (2005); vol. 32, no. 2 (2004)], Senior Editor of IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science since 2006, and an executive committee (ExCom) member of the IEEE Plasma Science and Application Committee (PSAC) since 2007. Paul joined AVS (American Vacuum Society) in 2002 and was elected Fellow of AVS in 2006 for his contributions to plasma science and surface engineering of materials and industrial components. He is also Fellow of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (FHKIE). Paul is an elected scientific member of the Böhmishe Physical Society (BPS) as well as member of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and Materials Research Society (MRS). Locally, he is a technical advisor to the National 863 Materials & Surface Engineering R&D Center in Shenzhen, China, advisor to Shenzhen Polytechnic, and member of the standing committee of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society. He is an associate editor of International Journal of Plasma Science and Engineering and has been a member of the Editorial Board of Materials Science and Engineering: Reports since 2005, International Journal of Molecular Engineering since 2006, Surface and Interface Analysis since 2006, and Recent Patents on Material Science since 2007. He was a member of the Editorial Board of Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms from 2000 to 2006 and guest editor of the PBII&D2005 special issue published in Surface and Coatings Technology [vol. 201, no. 15 (2007)]. He was a co-chair / organizer of Symposium GG: Ion-Beam-Based Nanofabrication in the MRS Spring Meeting in San Francisco in 2007. He was a member of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) Engineering Panel from 2000 to 2006.

Academically, in addition to being Professor (Chair) of Materials Engineering in the Department of Physics & Materials Science in City University of Hong Kong, he holds or has held advisory / visiting professorship in ten universities and research institutes in China: Institute of Microelectronics in Peking University (Beijing), Department of Materials Science in Fudan University (Shanghai), Department of Materials Science and Engineering in Shanghai Jiaotong University (Shanghai), Department of Materials Engineering in Southwest Jiaotong University (Chengdu), School of Materials Science and Engineering in Harbin Institute of Technology (Harbin), Department of Physics in Nanjing University (Nanjing), College of Materials Engineering in Jiamusi University (Jiamusi), Southwestern Institute of Physics (Chengdu), Shanghai Institute of Ceramics of The Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology of The Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has established a joint PhD program with the University of Sydney in Australia in which students in his research group in City University of Hong Kong or School of Physics in the University of Sydney receive PhD degrees from both universities upon graduation. He also participates in a similar joint PhD program between City University of Hong Kong and Tsinghua University, China. Paul's teaching credentials are quite impressive. He won the DuPont Teaching Award at Cornell University. At City University of Hong Kong, he has been voted “best lecturer” and “best presenter” by students in his department and short listed for the Teaching Excellence Award. He has taught many short courses and professional seminars on materials characterization and processing in universities and companies in the US, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Paul's research activities are quite diverse, spanning plasma science and engineering, ion implantation, surface modification, functional thin films, biomaterials, semiconductor materials and processing, optoelectronic materials, as well as nanotechnology. He is the editor of two books on biomaterials and plasma engineering. He has published more than 10 book chapters, 550 papers in international refereed journals, and 550 international conference papers, many of which invited or plenary. His innovative works on light emission from plasma-implanted silicon, novel silicon-on-insulator (SOI) materials, as well as the enhancement of surface bioactivity and blood compatibility of biomaterials using plasma, chemical, and optical techniques have been featured many times in magazines and electronic journals. He has obtained US$10 million in research funding from agencies and companies in Hong Kong, Australia, China, Germany, Switzerland, and the US. Two of his research projects were awarded the "Excellent" rating by the City University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Research Grants Council and he was the winner of the Second Best Paper Award in the IEEE International SOI Conference.

Paul is also heavily involved in applied research and industrial applications. His innovations on plasma processing and instrumentation have led to 8 United States patents and 3 Chinese patents. He founded his second company, Plasma Technology Ltd., in 1998 and co-founded his third company, Chengdu Pulsetech Electrical Co. Ltd., in 2001 to address the Chinese and other markets. The two companies specialize in the development of commercial plasma-based technologies as well as production of hardware such as ion sources, plasma implanters, and power supplies while also providing consultation to the industry. He was awarded the Applied Research Certificate of Merits for innovations in plasma instrumentation and power supplies and Hong Kong Awards for Industry: Technological Achievement Certificate of Merit for the development of plasma implantation and deposition technologies. Internationally, Paul’s achievement was instrumental to the establishment of Silicon Genesis Corporation in the Silicon Valley in California. Paul's research group produced the world’s first 100mm and 150mm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers by plasma immersion ion implantation and ion-cutting, leading to multi-million dollar capital infusion from Intel, Applied Materials, MEMC, Komatsu, H&Q and other VCs into Silicon Genesis. The invention was featured on the cover of the 40th anniversary issue of Solid State Technology as the representative technology from Hong Kong.

Paul participates actively in amateur sports and is Honorary Manager of the City University of Hong Kong varsity badminton and swimming teams. He has won men's singles, men's doubles, mixed doubles, and teams events in CityU Student/Staff badminton tournaments. In swimming, he holds all of the City University of Hong Kong staff records in breast stroke and butterfly and has won more than 100 medals in Hong Kong masters swimming competitions.

For more information, please go to this website:
http://www.cityu.edu.hk/ap/plasma/Paul%20Chu/paul_chu.htm

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