Photo of Russell D. Dupuis

Russell D. Dupuis

  • National Medal of Technology and Innovation
  • Electronics

For contributions to the development and commercialization of light-emitting diode (LED) technology, with applications to digital displays, consumer electronics, automotive lighting, traffic signals, and general illumination.

Russell Dupuis on the importance of LEDs

Laser printers, optical communication systems, CD players and bar-code scanners all have one thing in common. The work of Russell Dean Dupuis.

Dupuis pioneered the use of metalorganic chemical deposition, or MOCVD, utilized today in semiconductor technology. This became key in growing II-V compound solar cells, injection lasers and light-emitting diodes (LEDs), later used in thin film and devices including the first room-temperature quantum-well diode lasers.

The Steve W. Chaddick Chair in Electro-Optics and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Dupuis taught as a professor and served as Judson S. Swearingen Regents Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

Dupuis has received the IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award, IEEE/LEOS Engineering Achievement Award, and IEEE Edison Medal. His work also includes epitaxial growth by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition and heterojunction structures in III-V compound semiconductors. Most recently, he has worked to study materials in the InAlGaN/GaN, InAlGaAsP/GaAs, InAlGaAsSb, and InAlGaAsP/InP systems.

By Melissa Ayala