A UCF materials science and engineering master’s student has taken top honors for his work on thin films fabrication.
Eric Bissell took first place at the 2025 Florida Semiconductor Summit student poster session for his work, “Atomic Layer Deposition on Powders for Precisely Engineered Microstructure and Composition Control of Sintered Ceramics.”
Bissell says he was surprised and honored to be recognized with the best poster award for his research.
“I have been working on this project for close to two years, and this was the first time I presented my work,” Bissell says. “It is nice to have my work and ideas validated.”
Bissell tied for first among a total of 21 posters, which were judged based on content and research quality, poster design and organization, and presentation skills.
His work focuses on treating ceramics through a process called atomic layer disposition, which enables him to coat powder particles less than a 1000 times thinner than a human hair with an aluminum oxide.
“This powder modification allows us to restrict the growth of these particles during a process called sintering, which is when particles join into a solid under high temperature and pressure,” he says. “The goal is to have a very precise degree of control on the final structure of this solid through our deposition process.”
Bissell adds that the versatile process can be used across a number of industries and for a variety of applications, from electronic components to thermal barriers.
“This work has applications in the fabrication of a variety of different ceramics, whether that be structural or compositional control,” he says. “The beauty of this work is that it is broadly applicable almost any ceramic system. We are specifically interested in optical ceramics, like scintillators or transparent ceramics for window applications.”
Bissell has been a member of the Banerjee Lab and worked in close collaboration with the Gaume Lab, both part of UCF’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the College of Optics and Photonics since 2022. After he earns his master’s degree, he plans to stay at UCF to pursue a doctoral degree and start a company based on his research.
He says he chose to pursue his graduate degree at UCF because of its expertise in thin films and ceramics, including work from Banerjee and UCF optics and photonics professor Romain Gaume.
“I am happy to say that the professors I wanted to work with are the ones I currently do research with, Dr. Banerjee and Dr. Gaume.”
- Written by Bel Huston
- March 25, 2025