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Professor Philip E Batson
Philip E. Batson is a Distinguished Research Professor in Physics and Materials Science at Rutgers University, since his retirement from the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 2009. After receiving a Ph.D. in Applied Physics in 1976 at Cornell University with J. Silcox, for detailed bulk plasmon dispersion measurements using digital control and data acquisition, he did post-doctoral work at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge on Extended Electron Loss Fine Structure, also obtained with digital acquisition modifications to the VG Instruments STEM, and magnetic differential phase microscopy with J. Chapman, before moving to IBM in 1978. During the 1980’s he built high resolution EELS equipment for a new VG instrument at IBM, and installed digital control and CCD acquisition, while using VG equipment at Cornell to explore coupled surface plasmon scattering in metal nanoparticle systems. With the modified machine at IBM, he explored the electronic behavior of spatially confined systems such as Si/Si-Ge quantum wells. This work also revealed new understanding of core exciton behavior using EELS, and the first demonstration of scattered wave coherence in EELS, using channeling to reveal the transverse symmetry specimen excitations. In 1998, he collaborated with P. Kruit in Delft to build a Wien filter monochromator, demonstrating 60 meV resolution at 20 keV in the VG machine. In 2002, using the Nion aberration corrector introduced by N. Dellby and O. Krivanek, he was the first to demonstrate a sub-Angstrom probe size, for which he was recognized with a 2002-2003 Scientific American 50 Award for Leadership in Imaging Sciences. Currently, at Rutgers, he is exploring phonon behavior in nanometer sized structures using EELS with a 10 meV energy resolution. The NSF sponsored project, also in collaboration with Nion to improve EELS resolution, was cited by the White House in 2010 as one of "100 Recovery Act Projects that are Changing America." He has authored about 210 publications and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Microscopy Society of America and the Microbeam Analysis Society.