Dr James N Eckstein

Professor

Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PH: 1 (217) 244-7709
Email: [email protected]
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Background

Professor James N. Eckstein received his bachelor's degree in physics from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, in 1973, and his PhD. in physics from Stanford University in 1978. He joined the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois as a professor in 1997, after 15 productive years as a senior scientist/research manager at Varian Associates in Palo Alto, California.

Professor Eckstein is widely recognized as one of the pioneers in the development of techniques for growing high-quality oxide thin films for the investigation of fundamental properties of cuprate superconductors and oxide magnetic materials. His development of atomic layer-by-layer molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) has enabled research on oxide films at new levels of precision and sophistication.

His work, together with collaborators at Illinois, Stanford, and Berkeley, has been central to recent research on superconductors using measurements of angle-resolved photoemission and terahertz conductivity. In addition, his group has developed some of the best planar tunneling junctions ever made with oxide superconductors and oxide magnets. His studies of magnetic tunneling in oxides have pointed directly to the role of defects in limiting the range of temperatures over which such junctions exhibit significant magnetotransport effects. His program on thin-film manganites has contributed significantly to the understanding of these complex materials.

Professor Eckstein is the holder of six U.S. patents.