Dr. Keith H. Jackson, Ph.D.
Physics, X-Ray Optics, Sponsored Research

Dr. Jackson is now a university's Vice President of the Division of Research and Professor of Physics at Florida A&M University. Until recently, he has been a leader of lithography programs at the Center for X-ray Optics at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. From hand-held supercomputers to synthetic enzymes that repair damaged cells in the human body, to self-assembling molecular-sized machines that clean up our environment, the future belongs to nanotechnology. A key to achieving this future is x-ray lithography, which can fabricate devices with features of about 100 nanometers, only a thousandth the thickness of a human hair. His work was primarily in the area of molecular dynamics and photo-dissociation. This work required the use of rare gas excimer lasers and synchrotron radiation as excitation sources in the vacuum ultraviolet. Earlier, he was involved with the development of Silicon Nitride ( Si3 N4 ) as a potential gate insulator in NMOS, and CMOS technologies. His job was to develop the necessary processing techniques required to fabricate thin nitride films on silicon substrates. Later, in 1988, Dr. Jackson became a member of the Technical Staff at Rockwell International, where he established a facility for the growth and characterization of polycrystalline diamond thin films.