Milestone-Proposal talk:Molecular Beam Epitaxy

Advocates’ Checklist

1. Is the proposal for an achievement rather than for a person? If the citation includes a person's name, have the proposers provided the required justification for inclusion of the person's name?
2. Was the proposed achievement a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement to an existing technology?
3. Were there prior or contemporary achievements of a similar nature? If so, have they been properly considered in the background information and in the citation?
4. Has the achievement truly led to a functioning, useful, or marketable technology?
5. Is the proposal adequately supported by significant references (minimum of five) such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books? At least one of the references should be from a peer-reviewed scholarly book or journal article. The full text of the material, not just the references, shall be present. If the supporting texts are copyright-encumbered and cannot be posted on the ETHW for intellectual property reasons, the proposers shall email a copy to the History Center so that it can be forwarded to the Advocate. If the Advocate does not consider the supporting references sufficient, the Advocate may ask the proposer(s) for additional ones.
6. Are the scholarly references sufficiently recent?
7. Does the proposed citation explain why the achievement was successful and impactful?
8. Does the proposed citation include important technical aspects of the achievement?
9. Is the proposed citation readable and understandable by the general public?
10. Will the citation be read correctly in the future by only using past tense? Does the citation wording avoid statements that read accurately only at the time that the proposal is written?
11. Does the proposed plaque site fulfill the requirements?
12. Is the proposal quality comparable to that of IEEE publications?
13. Are any scientific and technical units correct (e.g., km, mm, hertz, etc.)? Are acronyms correct and properly upper-cased or lower-cased? Are the letters in any acronym explained in the title or the citation?
14. Are date formats correct as specified in Section 6 of Milestones Program Guidelines? Helpful Hints on Citations, plaque locations
15. Do the year(s) appearing in the citation fall within the range of the year(s) included at the end of the title?
16. Note that it is the Advocate's responsibility to confirm that the independent reviewers have no conflict of interest (e.g., that they do not work for a company or a team involved in the achievement being proposed, that they have not published with the proposer(s), and have not worked on a project related to the funding of the achievement). An example of a way to check for this would be to search reviewers' publications on IEEE Xplore.

Independent Expert Reviewers’ Checklist

1. Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
2. Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
3. Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
4. Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed?
5. Have proposers shown a clear benefit to humanity?

In answering the questions above, the History Committee asks that independent expert reviewers apply a similar level of rigor to that used to peer-review an article, or evaluate a research proposal. Some elaboration is desirable. Of course the Committee would welcome any additional observations that you may have regarding this proposal.

Submission and Approval Log (For staff use only)

Submitted date: 26 November 2024
Advocate approval date:
History Committee approval date:
Board of Directors approval date:

Initial Review -- Jbart64 (talk) 00:14, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

This milestone proposal needs more additional work. Historical background tied to sources should be expanded. One sentence responses to questions intended to address historical claims need to be expanded. Supporting materials should be identified and linked. The context of the achievement and its challenges need further explanation. The claims and context for the initial discovery both need to be narrowed to Bell Labs/Cho.

See this biography of Cho for reference: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=328644

You may be able to get this lecture from Cho as well: 1991 - Molecular beam epitaxy, from basic research to device fabrication Lecture sponsored by the Dept. of Electrical and Computer engineering, University of California, San Diego. Electrical and Computer Engineering Distinguished Lecture Series. Digital Object Made Available by Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.

I suggest the following approach to the milestone text that explains to the reader the nature of the original discovery/achievement (70 words). It also limits the claims to the initial work by Cho which was patented:

Molecular Beam Epitaxy, 1968-1970

Discovery and development of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) techniques using reflection high-energy electron diffraction for growing epitaxial compound semiconductor films took place in 1968-1970. MBE deposits single crystal structures one atomic layer at a time, creating materials that cannot be duplicated through other known techniques. This precise crystal growth method is used to fabricate semiconductor devices, quantum structures, and electronic and optical devices, including lasers employed in optical disc readers.

Dave Bart Milestone Advocate