Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
| necmi.biyikli@uconn.edu | |
| Phone | (860) 486-2666 |
| Mailing Address | Electrical and Computer Engineering 371 Fairfield Way U-4157 Storrs, Connecticut 06269-4157 |
| Campus | Storrs |
| Link | Department Page |
| Google Scholar Link | |
Brief Bio
NECMI BIYIKLI was born in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in 1974. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey in 1996, 1998, and 2004 respectively. Dr. Bıyıklı’s Ph.D. research concentrated on GaN/AlGaN-based ultraviolet and solar-blind photodetectors. Afterwards, during his postdoctoral research at the Virginia Commonwealth University, he worked on the MOCVD growth of AlGaN/GaN hetero-structures for various applications including high-performance transistors. Dr. Bıyıklı also worked as a research scientist at the Cornell Nanoscale Science and Technology Facility (CNF) where he developed RF-MEMS integrated multifunctional reconfigurable antennas. At the end of 2008 he joined UNAM – Materials Science & Nanotechnology Institute at Bilkent University, leading the “Functional Semiconductor Materials and Devices Research Group”.
After spending one year at Utah State University, in 2017 he joined the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at University of Connecticut, where he leads the Atomic Layer Engineering Laboratory within the Center for Clean Energy Engineering (C2E2). His current research interests include atomic layer deposition of III-nitride, metal-oxide, and metal thin-films and nanostructures, selective atomic-scale processing, III-Nitride opto-electronics, piezo-electric thin-films for chemical and biological sensing, photo-voltaics, and smart RF-antenna architectures. Dr. Biyikli is the recipient of EU-Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant Award in 2010 and METU-Parlar Foundation Research Incentive Award in 2013. Dr. Biyikli is a member of American Vacuum Society (AVS) and Materials Research Society (MRS) and has contributed to 300+ journal and conference publications.
- III-Nitride semiconductor materials (AlN, GaN, InN)
- III-Nitride thin-film growth (Plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition, MOCVD)
- Metal-Oxide semiconductor materials (ZnO, TiO2, SnO2)
- Metal-Oxide thin-film growth (DC/RF-Sputtering, atomic layer deposition)
- Piezo-electric thin-films (AlN, ZnO)
- Tunable/smart alloys (Phase change – GST / Tunable dielectric – BST)
- Durable materials (BN)
- Opto-electronics: Photodetectors, LEDs based on III-Nitride compounds
- Electronics: High-power/high-frequency III-Nitride transistors, thin-film transistors (TFTs)
- Renewable energy: Inorganic solar cells, hybrid organic/inorganic solar cells, dye synthesized solar cells (DSSC)
- Sensing: Chemical/gas sensors for environmental monitoring using ZnO/SnO2/TiO2 nanostructures and ZnO/AlN SAW sensors
- Wireless communication: Novel materials & architectures for next-generation smart/green wireless communication systems
- Functional surfaces: Photocatalytic coatings based on hybrid organic/inorganic nano-structures using ALD
- Health monitoring & Medical diagnosis: Biological sensors, micro-needles, Lab-on-a-Chip (LoC) devices & systems
- National security and defense: Reconfigurable RF-antenna systems for agile & secure communication systems
- M. A. Khalily, N. Biyikli, et al.,“Facile synthesis of three-dimensional Pt-TiO2 nanonetworks: Highly active catalyst for hydrolytic dehydrogenation of ammonia borane”, Angewandte Chemie 55, 12257 (2016).
- A. Haider, N. Biyikli, et al.,“Low-temperature grown wurtzite InxGa1-xN thin films via hollow cathode plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition”, Journal of Materials Chemistry (C) 3, 9620 (2015).
- F. Kayaci, N. Biyikli, et al.,“Role of zinc interstitials and oxygen vacancies of ZnO in photocatalysis: A bottom-up approach to control the defect density”, Nanoscale 6, 10224 (2014).
- C. Ozgit-Akgun, N. Biyikli, et al., “Hollow-cathode plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition of crystalline AlN, GaN, and AlxGa1-xN thin films at low temperature”, Journal of Materials Chemistry (C) 2, 2123 (2014) [Front Cover Article]. Major breakthrough: A novel method for plasma-assisted ALD which enabled a dramatic decrease in impurity content of low-temperature-grown GaN thin films is proposed. Moreover, for the first time, the self-limiting growth for crystalline AlGaN alloys along with bandgap tuning is demonstrated.
- A. Haider, N. Biyikli, “Fabrication of BN/AlN bishell hollow nanofibers by electrospinning and atomic layer deposition”, APL Materials 2, 096109 (2014). Key contribution: A low-temperature process to fabricate multi-layered hollow crystalline BN/AlN nanostructures on polymeric nanofibrous templates is developed.
- S. Bolat, N. Biyikli, et al.,“Low temperature thin film transistors with hollow cathode plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition based GaN channels”, Applied Physics Letters 104, 243505 (2014). Major breakthrough: The lowest process temperature budget (growth and fabrication @ T<200°C) reported ever for GaN-based thin-film transistors by using our own hollow-cathode plasma-assisted ALD (HCPA-ALD) technique is achieved.
- C. Ozgit-Akgun, N. Biyikli, et al.,“Fabrication of flexible polymer-GaN core-shell nanofibers by the combination of electrospinning and hollow cathode plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition”, Journal of Materials Chemistry (C) 3, 5199 (2015). (Key advance: Fabricating flexible core-shell GaN nanofibers via low-temperature HCPA-ALD, which might have potential use in flexible electronics is succeeded)
- F. Kayaci, N. Biyikli, et al.,“Selective isolation of the electron or hole in photocatalysis: ZnO–TiO2 and TiO2–ZnO core-shell structured heterojunction nanofibres via electrospinning and atomic layer deposition”, Nanoscale 6, 5735 (2014) [Front Cover Article]. (Key contribution: Novel core-shell metal-oxide nanofiber structures demonstrating significantly improved photocatalysis performance)
- C. Ozgit, N. Biyikli, et al.,“Template-based synthesis of aluminum nitride hollow nanofibers via plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition”, Journal of the American Ceramics Society 96, 916 (2013).
- C. Ozgit, N. Biyikli, et al.,“Self-limiting low-temperature growth of crystalline AlN thin films by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition”, Thin Solid Films 520, 2750 (2012). Major breakthrough: The self-limiting growth of crystalline AlN thin films at extremely low temperatures down to 100°C is accomplished.
- F. Kayaci, N. Biyikli, et al.,“Polymer-Inorganic Core-Shell Nanofibers by Electrospinning and Atomic Layer Deposition: Flexible Nylon-ZnO Core-Shell Nanofiber Mats and Their Photocatalytic Activity”, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 4, 6185 (2012).
- H. Ceylan, N. Biyikli, et al., “Size-controlled conformal nanofabrication of biotemplated three-dimensional TiO2 and ZnO nanonetworks”, Scientific Reports, 3, 2306 (2013). Key advance: We used the ultimate conformality and precision of our ALD recipes to coat highly 3D nano-biotemplates to craft functional metal-oxide nanomaterials and demonstrated intensely improved photocatalytic activity.
- N. Biyikli, et al.,”Magneto-transport properties of MOVPE-grown AlxGa1-xN/AlN/GaN heterostructures with high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas”, Journal of Applied Physics 101, 113710 (2007). Key contribution: The III-nitride HEMT epilayers are grown using two different lateral overgrowth techniques and the low-temperature mobility values are characterized which resulted in significantly enhanced 2DEG mobility when compared to conventional HEMT structures.
- N. Biyikli, et al.,”Solar-blind AlGaN-based Schottky photodiodes with low noise and high detectivity”, Applied Physics Letters 81, 3272 (2002). Key contribution: We demonstrated AlGaN-based Schottky photodiodes showing solar blindness with record detectivity performance approaching PMT sensitivity levels.
- N. Biyikli, et al.,”45-GHz Bandwidth-Efficiency Resonant-Cavity-Enhanced ITO-Schottky Photodiodes”, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters 13, 705 (2001). Key advance: We developed AlGaAs/GaAs-based RCE-Schottky photodiodes exhibiting the highest bandwidth-efficiency performance reported for vertical type of photodetectors.