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Department of Physics

The Cavendish Laboratory
 
Prof Jim Scott chosen as Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate

Prof Jim Scott of the Cavendish Quantum Matter group has been selected by Thomson Reuters as a Citation Laureate. The scientists selected are, in the view of Thomson Reuters, "researchers whose landmark discoveries and advances, not to mention their measurable esteem in the scientific community, place them within reach of the Nobel Prize."

The citation for Jim reads:  "In 1989 James Scott (then at the University of Colorado, and currently at the University of Cambridge) changed everything when he used epitaxy to combine ferroelectric thin-film to silicon or gallium arsenide and thus make integrated circuit memory devices.

Epitaxy is a technique of growing a single crystal film on top of a crystalline substrate. Scott’s devices had a 30 nanosecond read-erase-write operation, 5 volt operation level, very high density ( 2 x 2 μm), and complete nonvolatility (no standby voltage needed to preserve memory). This novel random-access memory rapidly displaced magnetic core memory and bubble memory. His citation on election to the Royal Society of London in 2008 refers to him as “the father of integrated ferroelectrics.” The field has grown explosively ever since his breakthrough.”

 We congratulate Jim on this outstanding recognition of his work. More details can be found here

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