Introduction to Semiconductor Physics

Aaron Danner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore, where he has been teaching since 2006. His expertise lies in semiconductor device fabrication and characterization, with a focus on optoelectronics devices. Danner leads the Optical Device Research Group at NUS, exploring cutting-edge areas in optics and photonics, including materials and structures that enhance light-matter interaction. His research targets applications in optical communications, arbitrary optical wavefront generation and detection, quantum information processing, and holography. Danner's work encompasses industrially-relevant research on vertical cavity lasers, solar cells, and nonlinear optical materials for long-distance optical fiber communications and on-chip quantum optics. He is particularly interested in overcoming fabrication challenges with materials like lithium niobate and barium titanate for photonics-lab-on-chip and quantum-optics-on-chip applications. Danner's group recently secured a $7 million Competitive Research Project from Singapore's National Research Foundation for work on optical Ising machines. Prior to joining NUS, he worked in the semiconductor industry at Agilent's wafer fab division (now part of Broadcom). Danner holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and is committed to making high-quality educational materials accessible to all, regardless of resources and background.