Leigh Canham is a British scientist who has pioneered the optoelectronic and biomedical applications of

porous silicon Porous silicon (abbreviated as "PS" or "pSi") is a form of the chemical element silicon that has introduced nanopores in its microstructure, rendering a large surface to volume ratio in the order of 500 m2/cm3. History Porous silicon was disco ...

. Leigh Canham graduated from

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

in 1979 with a BSc in Physics and completed his PhD at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

in 1983. His early work in this area took place at the

Royal Signals and Radar Establishment The Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE) was a scientific research establishment within the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of the United Kingdom. It was located primarily at Malvern in Worcestershire, England. The RSRE motto was ''Ubique ...

Malvern, Worcestershire Malvern (, locally also: ) is a spa town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in Worcestershire, England. It lies at the foot of the Malvern Hills, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The centre of Malvern, Great Malvern, is ...

. Canham and his colleagues showed that electrochemically etched silicon could be made porous. This porous material could emit visible light when a current was passed through it (

electroluminescence Electroluminescence (EL) is an optical phenomenon, optical and electrical phenomenon, in which a material emits light in response to the passage of an electric current or to a strong electric field. This is distinct from black body light emission ...

). Later the group demonstrated the biocompatibility of porous silicon. Canham now works as Chief Scientific Officer of psiMedica (part of

pSiVida EyePoint Pharmaceuticals Inc. (formerly pSivida Corporation) is a Watertown, Massachusetts company specialising in the application of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and nanotechnology to drug delivery. pSivida obtained porous silicon te ...

). According to the pSiVida web site, Canham is the most cited author on porous silicon. In a study of most cited physicists up to 1997 Canham ranked at 771.

Bibliography

Selected papers

* Porous silicon-based scaffolds for

tissue engineering Tissue engineering is a biomedical engineering discipline that uses a combination of cells, engineering, materials methods, and suitable biochemical and physicochemical factors to restore, maintain, improve, or replace different types of biolo ...

and other biomedical applications, Jeffery L. Coffer, Melanie A. Whitehead, Dattatri K. Nagesha, Priyabrata Mukherjee, Giridhar Akkaraju, Mihaela Totolici, Roghieh S. Saffie, Leigh T. Canham, Physica Status Solidi A Vol. 202, Issue 8, Pages 1451 - 1455 * Gaining light from silicon, Leigh Canham, Nature vol. 408, pp. 411 – 412 (2000) * Progress towards silicon

optoelectronics Optoelectronics (or optronics) is the study and application of electronic devices and systems that find, detect and control light, usually considered a sub-field of photonics. In this context, ''light'' often includes invisible forms of radi ...

using porous silicon technology, L. T. Canham, T. I. Cox, A. Loni and A. J. Simons, Applied Surface Science, Volume 102, Pages 436-441 (1996) *Porous silicon multilayer optical waveguides, A. Loni, L. T. Canham, M. G. Berger, R. Arens-Fischer, H. Munder, H. Luth, H. F. Arrand and T. M. Benson, Thin Solid Films, Vol. 276, Issues 1-2, pages 143-146 (1996) * The origin of efficient luminescence in highly porous silicon, K. J. Nash, P. D. J. Calcott, L. T. Canham, M. J. Kane and D. Brumhead, J. of Luminescence, Volumes 60-61, Pages 297-301 (1994) * Electronic quality of vapour phase epitaxial Si grown at reduced temperature, W. Y. Leong, L. T. Canham, I. M. Young and D. J. Robbins, Thin Solid Films, Volume 184, Issues 1-2, pages 131-137 (1990) * Silicon

quantum wire In mesoscopic physics, a quantum wire is an electrically conducting wire in which quantum effects influence the transport properties. Usually such effects appear in the dimension of nanometers, so they are also referred to as nanowires. Quantum ...

array fabrication by electrochemical and chemical dissolution of wafers, L. T. Canham, Applied Physic Letters, Volume 57, pages 1046-1048 (1990)

Books

* Properties of Porous Silicon, Leigh Canham (Ed.) Inspec/IEE (1997) * Biomedical Mems: Clinical Applications of Silicon Technology, Leigh Canham, Inst of Physics Pub Inc (2003)

Selected patents

US patent 6,322,895

External links

pSivida

{{DEFAULTSORT:Canham, Leigh 1958 births Living people British physicists Semiconductor physicists Alumni of University College London Alumni of King's College London