Paul Lyman
Website: https://sites.uwm.edu/plyman/
Research
Lyman’s research efforts are focused on growth of novel thin films and determination of surface reconstructions. One principal effort (in collaboration with Prof. Dilano Saldin) involves developing and applying phase retrieval methods to help solve surface structures directly from x-ray diffraction data. Materials of interest include oxides and wide-bandgap semiconductors, especially the structure of polar oxides. In addition to standard UHV preparation methods, we are interested in air-stable oxide reconstructions, and growth of thin epitaxial films using atomic layer deposition (ALD). The fine control afforded by the ALD technique allows the construction of novel multilayered materials, such as (Mg,Zn)O alloys.
Biographical Sketch
Paul Lyman completed his undergraduate education at the University of Notre Dame in 1985 and his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. He conducted post-doctoral studies at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 1991 to 1993. Lyman then went to Northwestern University, where he worked as postdoctoral fellow from 1993 to 1994 and as research associate until 1998. In 1998 he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he now holds the rank of Professor.
Professor Lyman was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER grant in 2000. Currently he is the Chair of the American Vacuum Society (AVS) Prairie Chapter and he is broadly involved in training undergraduate students, largely through the NSF’s REU and RET program. Also, Lyman instituted and ran for three years a symposium series to showcase interdisciplinary surface research at UWM.