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Washington State University Institute of Materials Research

Marc H. Weber

Office:                     ETRL 016 or Webster 527

Telephone:             509 335 7872 or 509 335 8145

e-mail:                     m_weber@wsu.edu

Postal mail:             Marc H. Weber

              Institute of Materials Research

              Washington State University

              Pullman, WA 99164-2711

About Me

At age 10 I was fascinated by the endeavor of NASA and its Astronauts to venture out into space and in July 1969 to land on the Moon. These adventures and accomplishments in science and engineering steered me onto a path of scientific endeavors for the rest of my career. Physics was the most exciting topic in high school. I continued to pursue that topic as an undergrad. A grant from the Fulbright Commission allowed me to combine my passions of traveling and Physics. Bright eyed and naïve I arrived in New York City in 1982 to study there for a year. I got stuck and signed up as a graduate student to build and use the most intense beam of positrons with the goal of bouncing the lightest atom – called positronium (Ps) – that is both matter and antimatter counterpart off the surface if single crystals.

From there, antimatter became the common element in research projects looking for a new hypothetical particle (it does not exist) in high energy physics, positron scattering in atomic and molecular physics and then on to materials science with positrons. There was a brief detour into checking up on proclaimed observations of cold fusion.

I continued to journey from New York to Long Island (thesis) to Germany and to the Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, to team up again with the late Kelvin G. Lynn. I had spent my thesis years at Brookhaven National Lab in his group. In Pullman, I use positrons to investigate open volume defects in materials such as vacancies, nano-scale porosity and more complex defects.

In the past years with Dr. Lynn we pursued the possibility of storing positrons as a source of antimatter energy for space propulsion. We had come up with a new idea of confining charged particles for a long time.

Now, I returned to defects in materials. I added a nano-CT Xray microscope to the toolbox of investigating sub nanometer defects in materials. These include porous low-k dielectrics for insulating layers in high-speed semiconductors, zinc oxide for transparent electronics, silicon carbide and gallium oxide for radiation resistant semiconductors and porous materials research for the oil industry, batteries, water filters, drug delivery and even faster computers. The motto is “Use Antimatter if you want to see nothing”.