Published August 24, 2026 by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
On August 6th, 2026, PhD candidate Miranda Carver received the Best Student Oral Presentation award at IWGO-6, the sixth International Workshop on Gallium Oxide and Related Materials, held at the University of Maryland.
Carver is a PhD candidate in Prof. Steven A. Ringel’s Electronic Materials and Devices Lab (EMDL). She attends The Ohio State University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate program through the DoD SMART Scholarship program.
IWGO is the most prestigious international forum for Ga2O3 and related materials. The program covers a wide range of topics from processing to theory and modeling, encompassing characterization, polymorphism, bulk growth, and devices. The conference hosted presenters from more than 15 countries, including Japan, Germany, South Korea, France, and the United Kingdom. The student awards, sponsored by APL Electronic Devices and Applied Physics Letters, were presented during the conference banquet, and over 20 students gave oral presentations at this year’s workshop.
“This work would not have happened without Prof. Ringel’s guidance and the rest of the EMDL group,” Carver stated.
Carver’s talk was entitled “Identification and Suppression of Carbon-Related Trap States and Carrier Compensation in MOCVD-Grown β-Ga2O3.” Gallium oxide is one of the leading candidates for the next generation of high-voltage power electronics. A key challenge is that when the material is grown using trimethylgallium, a gallium precursor, the precursor decomposes and carbon atoms become trapped in the crystal. Those trapped carbon atoms create defect states that capture free carrier electrons, and with too much carbon the material stops behaving like a semiconductor. Carver’s work identifies which traps are carbon-related and shows that adjusting the oxygen flow rate during growth suppresses the traps, using deep level transient and optical spectroscopy (DLTS/DLOS) and comparing results to SIMS-measured carbon concentrations.