Philips research veteran Fred Roozeboom’s career honored with Gordon E. Moore medal

The Electrochemical Society (ECS) has bestowed the Gordon E. Moore Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Solid State Science & Technology to Fred Roozeboom, former research fellow at Philips and NXP. Established in 1971 as the Solid State Science and Technology Award, it was renamed in 2005 to honor the achievements of Gordon Moore in the field of microelectronics. Former recipients include Nobel laureate Isamu Akasaki and solar cell inventor Gerald Pearson. Roozeboom is the first European to receive the prize.

The award salutes lifetime achievements, and Roozeboom’s career can be summarized with only two words: short pulses. His first assignment at Philips Research, which he joined in 1983 after obtaining a PhD degree in inorganic chemistry at the University of Twente, focused on rapid thermal processing (RTP), ie exposing a silicon wafer to a ‘pulse’ of heat. Such a heat treatment, performed on single wafers, alters the physical and chemical properties of materials and is an important tool in the semiconductor processing toolkit.