LAB2FAB

Dr. A.J. (Tony) SpringThorpe graduated with a B.Sc. in Physics in 1963 and a Ph.D. in solid state physics in 1967 from the University of Sheffield, England; thesis topic “The electrical and optical properties of NiO and CoO”. This was followed by a three-year post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Bath, England. In this work, techniques were developed to produce many of the ternary analogues of III-V compound semiconductors. At the conclusion of the fellowship, in October 1969, he joined Northern Electric R&D Labs, later to become Bell-Northern Research, and now Nortel Networks. During the next ten years, this work led to the development of processes for the preparation and fabrication of a wide range of optoelectronic devices, many of which saw application in the first generation of fiber optic transmission systems. He designed and built the first Canadian MOCVD system in 1978. Building on this experience, in the mid 80’s, he was instrumental in introducing MOCVD and Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) to Nortel for the production of the next generation of III-V compound device structures. Dr. SpringThorpe was manager of epitaxy from ’78 to ‘97 and then became an independent contributor for his final five years before retirement from Nortel. As a consequence of his industrial career, he currently holds numerous patents on various aspects of III-V compound semiconductor epitaxy and devices, and has contributed to many publications and presentations on materials and devices.

Immediately after retirement from Nortel, he joined the fledgling Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre as a principal research officer in the Fall of 2002, with responsibility for epitaxy. In this role, he has been instrumental in specifying and commissioning the MOCVD system that is the foundation of the CPFC’s III-V compound materials capability.

In 1977, he was awarded the W. Lash Miller prize of the Electrochemical Society for his work on the development of III-V compound materials and devices. In 1997, he was also awarded the Nortel presidents’ prize for technology cascade. This was in recognition of his long-term contribution to the success of the Nortel optoelectronics program. In 2004, he was awarded a medal by the Canadian Association of Physics for his contributions to industrial physics during his time with Nortel, and in 2005, he was named MBE innovator of the year by the North American MBE conference for his contributions to in-situ monitoring techniques for molecular beam epitax.

In addition, he has mentored more than thirty students, some of whom have gone on to successful university careers – most notable amongst them are Prof. Ted Sargent of the University of Toronto, and Prof Axel Becke of Dalhousie University. He was also an adjunct professor of Engineering Physics at McMaster University for a five-year period in the 90’s.

Since joining the CPFC, he has continued to collaborate with groups within IMS – most notably that of H.C. Liu, for whom he continues to supply state-of-the art device structures for THz source and detector applications – this is reflected in the many publications from the group that acknowledge his material contributions.