Alec Broers, Baron Broers
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Alec Nigel Broers, Baron Broers, (born 17 September 1938) is a British electrical engineer. In 1994 Broers was elected an international member of the
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...
for contributions to electronic beam lithography and microscopy and for leadership in microfabrication.


Education and early life

Broers was born in
Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...
,
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
and educated at
Geelong Grammar School , motto_translation = 1 Corinthians 1:30: "For us, Christ was made wisdom"( 1 Corinthians 1:30: Christ, who has been made for us in wisdom) , city = Corio, Victoria , country = Australia , coordinates = , ...
and
Melbourne University The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb no ...
in Australia and at
University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...
(
Gonville and Caius College Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of th ...
) in
England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
.


Career

Broers then worked in the research and development laboratories of IBM in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
for 19 years before returning to
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...
in 1984 to become Professor of Electrical Engineering (1984–96) and Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...
(1985–90). He is a pioneer of nanotechnology. Broers subsequently became Master of Churchill College, Cambridge (1990–96) and Head of the Cambridge University Engineering Department (1993–96). He was Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, 1996–2003. In 1997 he was invited to deliver the MacMillan Memorial Lecture to the
Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland The Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland (IESIS) is a multi-disciplinary professional body and learned society, founded in Scotland, for professional engineers in all disciplines and for those associated with or taking an interes ...
. He chose the subject "The Role and Education of the Creative Engineer". He was knighted in 1998 and created a
crossbench A crossbencher is an independent or minor party member of some legislatures, such as the British House of Lords and the Parliament of Australia. They take their name from the crossbenches, between and perpendicular to the government and oppositi ...
life peer in 2004, as Baron Broers, of Cambridge in the County of Cambridgeshire. Lord Broers was Chairman of the
Science and Technology Committee Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence fo ...
of the
House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by appointment, heredity or official function. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminste ...
from 2004 to 2007 and was President of the Royal Academy of Engineering from 2001 to 2006. In September 2008, Lord Broers took over from Sir David Cooksey as chairman of the board of directors at the
Diamond Light Source Diamond Light Source (or Diamond) is the UK's national synchrotron light source science facility located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire. Its purpose is to produce intense beams of light whose special characteristic ...
, the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
's largest new scientific facility for 45 years.


Awards and honours

Lord Broers has received more than twenty honorary degrees and fellowships from universities, colleges, and academic and professional institutions. He is a Foreign Member of the US
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...
, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and the
American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1985. He is an Honorary Fellow of
St Edmund's College, Cambridge St Edmund's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England. Founded in 1896, it is the second-oldest of the four Cambridge colleges oriented to mature students, which accept only students reading for postgraduate degr ...
.


Career summary

*1938 Born 17 September in Calcutta, India *1941 Moved to Sydney, Australia *1944 Moved to Purley, Surrey, UK *1948 Moved to Melbourne, Australia and attended Geelong Grammar School *1959
BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...
degree in physics from
Melbourne University The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb no ...
, Australia *1962 BA degree in electrical sciences from the
University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...
, after arriving initially as a
choral scholar A choral scholar is a student either at a university or private school who receives a scholarship in exchange for singing in the school or university's choir. This is a common practice in the UK at schools attached to cathedrals where the choir is ...
*1965 PhD degree at University of Cambridge, thesis titled ''Selective ion beam etching in the scanning electron microscope'' *1965 Researcher at IBM USA, and serving on the Corporate Technical Committee *1977 Appointed to
IBM Fellow An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM's CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June. Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achiev ...
by IBM's CEO. *1984 Returns to the University of Cambridge as Professor of Electrical Engineering and Fellow of Trinity College *1990 Master of
Churchill College Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but still retains a strong interest in the arts and humanities. In 1958, a trust was establish ...
*1992 Head of
Cambridge University Engineering Department The University of Cambridge Department of Engineering is the largest department at the University of Cambridge and one of the leading centres of engineering in the world. The department's aim is to address the world's most pressing challenges wit ...
*1994 International member of the
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...
*1995 Becomes a non-executive director of Lucas Industries *1996 Vice Chancellor, University of Cambridge (until 2003) *1997 Becomes a non-executive director of Vodafone *1998 Knighted for services to education *1998 Founded the
Cambridge Network The Cambridge Network is a commercial business networking organisation for business people and academics working in technology fields in the Cambridge area of the UK. The businesses and organisations that make up its membership are typical of thos ...
with Hermann Hauser and David Cleevely *2001 President of The Royal Academy of Engineering *2004 Granted a
Life Peerage In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. In modern times, life peerages, always created at the rank of baron, are created under the Life Peerages A ...
(became Lord Broers) *2004 Becomes Chairman of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee *2005 Broers presents the
Reith Lectures The Reith Lectures is a series of annual BBC radio lectures given by leading figures of the day. They are commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on Radio 4 and the World Service. The lectures were inaugurated in 1948 to mark the historic contribu ...
for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
*2008 Becomes Chairman of Diamond Light Source Ltd. *2009 Becomes Chairman of Bio Nano Consulting. *2010 Becomes Chairman of the Technology Strategy Board Knowledge Transfer Network for Transport. *2012-2015 Chairman of the Judging Panel of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.


Research

Alec Broers began his research career in the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge in 1961 working with Professor Oatley, and later with Dr William C Nixon, on the in situ study of surfaces undergoing ion etching in the scanning electron microscope (SEM). The microscope he used had originally been built by Oatley and had then been modified Garry Stewart who had also added an ion source that focussed ions onto the sample surface. Garry Stewart, who was another of Professor Oatley's students, then moved to the
Cambridge Instrument Company Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company was a company founded in the late 1870s by Robert Fulcher. The original use of the company was to service instruments for the Cambridge physiology department. In the beginning, the company was financially dri ...
where he oversaw the design and building of the world's first commercial SEM, the Stereoscan. During his PhD Alec rebuilt the SEM fitting a magnetic final lens in place of the original electrostatic lens thereby improving the microscope's resolution to about 10 nm, and after examining ion etched surfaces, used the microscope's electron beam for the first time to write patterns, subsequently using ion etching to transfer these patterns into gold, tungsten and silicon structures as small as 40 nm. These were the first man-made nanostructures in materials suitable for microelectronic circuits opening up the possibility for the extreme miniaturization of electronic circuits that was to occur in the decades to come. After graduating from Cambridge, Lord Broers spent nearly 20 years in research and development with IBM in the United States. He worked for sixteen years at the Thomas J Watson Research Centre in New York, then for 3 years at the East Fishkill Development Laboratory, and finally at Corporate Headquarters. His first assignment at the T J Watson Research laboratory was to find a long life electron emitter to replace the tungsten wire filaments used in electron microscopes at the time. IBM had built the first billion bit computer store using an electron beam to write on photographic film and the relatively short lifetime of the tungsten filament sources was not acceptable. To solve this problem he developed the first practical electron guns that used LaB6 emitters. These emitters not only solved the lifetime problem, but also provided higher electron brightness than tungsten filaments, and in the late 1960s and early 1970s he built two new SEMs for examining surfaces that took advantage of this and produced higher resolution than previous SEMs (3 nm in the secondary electron surface mode) and then a short focal length instrument with 0.5 nm beam size. He used the second SEM to examine thin samples in the transmission mode and to examine solid samples using the high energy electron scattered from the surface of the sample, the electrons that had been called 'low-loss electrons by Oliver C Wells who had proposed their use in the SEM. Initially this high resolution low-loss mode was used to examine bacteriophage and blood cells in collaboration with researchers at NYU, and at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in New Jersey however, the bulk of his work was devoted to using the microscopes as tools to scribe things using the lithography techniques that were becoming familiar for making silicon chips. He and his colleague Michael Hatzakis used these new electron beam lithography to make the first silicon transistors with micron dimensions. and sub-micron dimensions showing that it would be possible to scale down the dimensions of electron devices well below the dimensions that were being used at the time. "I had a marvellous time doing research in the IBM research laboratory" he recalls "I had essentially turned my hobby into my career." He remembers having a roomful of electronics and was overjoyed to spend his time building new things and testing them. There he spent around 16 years in research in one of the best 'playhouses for electronics' in the world, building microscopes and equipment for the fabrication of miniature components. In 1977 he was given the enviable position of being an IBM fellow, an honour accorded to, at that time, only around 40 out of IBM's 40,000 engineers and scientists. This gave him the freedom to follow whatever road of enquiry he wished and he continued his work pushing the limits of what was called at the time microfabrication. Over the next ten years he conducted a series of careful experiments measuring the ultimate resolution of electron beam lithography and then used the highest resolution methods to fabricate electronic devices. One of the deleterious effects that limited resolution was the fogging effect of the electrons backscattered from the bulk of the sample. To avoid this Broers and Sedgwick invented a thin membrane substrate using technologies used to make inkjet printer heads. The membrane was thin enough effectively to eliminate the backscattered electrons. These membrane substrates allowed the first metal structures with dimensions below 10 nm to be fabricated and tested. Because these dimensions were now measured in single nanometers he and his coworkers decided to call these nanostructures and the techniques used to make them nanofabrication rather than use the prefix micro that had been common parlance until then. These membrane samples also found application many years later in MEMs (Micro-Electro-Mechanical) devices, and also as 'cantilevers' in biomedical applications. Early experiments with X-ray lithography also used similar membranes. When he arrived back in Cambridge, Lord Broers set up a nanofabrication laboratory to extend the technology of miniaturisation to the atomic scale by developing some of the novel fabrication methods"Electron Beam Lithography—Resolution Limits", Broers, A. N.; Hoole A. C. N. and Ryan J. M.; ''Microelectronic Engineering'' 32, pp. 131–142, 1996 that he had discovered at IBM. He modified a 400 kV transmission electron microscope (JEOL 4000EX) so that it operated in a scanning mode and produced a minimum beam size of about 0.3 nm. He used this system working in collaboration with researchers at the IMEC microelectronics research laboratory in Leuven, Belgium, to build some of the smallest and fastest field effect transistors that had ever been built.


References


External sources


The Reith lectures, 2005
were given by Lord Broers
Interview with Lord Broers, ''Ingenia'' Magazine
March 2005
Lord Broers on the triumph of technology
March 2005 {{DEFAULTSORT:Broers, Alec Living people 1938 births People educated at Geelong Grammar School University of Melbourne alumni Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Fellows of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Fellows of Churchill College, Cambridge Masters of Churchill College, Cambridge Vice-Chancellors of the University of Cambridge Knights Bachelor People's peers Crossbench life peers IBM Fellows Fellows of the Royal Society Presidents of the Royal Academy of Engineering Trustees of the British Museum Vodafone people Fellows of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering Presidents of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) Foreign members of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Deputy Lieutenants of Cambridgeshire Members of the American Philosophical Society Engineering professors at the University of Cambridge Life peers created by Elizabeth II