Kobe Steel Distinguished Professor Zlatko Sitar became a senior member of the National Academy of Inventors — a nonprofit organization founded in 2012 with the mission of encouraging inventors in academia. He is just one of 95 senior members nationwide of the 2023 class of the inventors’ academy.
Professor Sitar founded the Wide Band Gaps research laboratory that focuses on bulk and thin film growth, characterization, and device development in wide bandgap semiconductors: GaN, AlN, and their alloys. He has pioneered the III-nitride MBE process through the design of a unique ECR plasma source, developed, patented, and commercialized a process for the growth of AlN crystals, which is currently the only commercial high-quality AlN crystal growth process in the world (commercialized by HexaTech, Inc.), developed, patented, and commercialized epi-ready wafers and device layer growth processes on AlN wafers, which are the basis for high-efficiency deep-UV lasers and light emitting diodes, invented and patented a process for the growth of III-nitride lateral polar structures via MOCVD and proposed and demonstrated novel devices based on this invention, which include lateral p-n diodes, low contact-resistance field effect transistors, quasi-phase-matched structures for optical frequency doubling, and super junction-based devices.
Prof. Sitar directs the Materials Research Center at NC State and holds joint appointments in the Physics Department at NC State and Electrical Engineering at the University of Nagoya, Japan. His collaborative network spans all four inhabited continents. Based on his research, he founded HexaTech, Inc., an NC State spin-out focusing on AlN crystal growth and wafer production, and Adroit Materials, Inc., who is focusing on the development of UV light emitting devices on the AlN platform and vertical devices on native GaN substrates.