The winner of the 2023 TPS Best Paper Award has been selected (please refer to our TPS home page for details about the award at https://ieee-npss.org/publications/transactions-on-plasma-science/).  This year is the fifth year that the award is being given, and I am pleased to announce that this year’s winner is the paper, “Effect of Nonuniform Emission on Miram Curves” Published in: IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Volume: 48, Issue: 1, January. 2020, Page(s): 146 – 155. 

The nine co-authors of this paper are David Chernin; John J. Petillo; and Serguei Ovtchinnikov from Leidos Inc., Reston, VA USA; Y. Y. Lau; and Abhijit Jassem from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA; Dongzheng Chen; Ryan Jacobs; Dane Morgan; and John Booske from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI USA.  The abstract of the paper and the photos and biosketches of the co-authors are given below.  The award plaques, certificates and award checks have been sent to the co-authors by IEEE.  This paper is an open access paper, freely available to all our readers.  Congratulations to the team of co-authors David Chernin, John J. Petillo, Serguei Ovtchinnikov, Y. Y. Lau, Abhijit Jassem, Dongzheng Chen; Ryan Jacobs; Dane Morgan; and John Booske on this accomplishment.

Abstract: Analysis of temperature-limited flow, space-charge-limited flow, and the transition between them using a simple planar diode with a thermionic cathode, in which the cathode surface has spatially nonuniform emission properties, is presented. Our theoretical results, which are derived from a model based on solutions to the Vlasov and Poisson equations, compare well with the results of particle-in-cell simulations. We find that the location and the shape of the knee in the anode current versus temperature characteristic (Miram or “rollover” curve) are significantly affected by non-uniformities in the space-charge density in the A-K gap, but are relatively unaffected by the electron motion parallel to the electrode surfaces. In particular, emission from an actively emitting region is strongly affected by the forces (or lack thereof) exerted by the space-charge of the electrons emitted by their neighbors. Perhaps, most remarkably, we find that the limiting current reaching the anode is approximately given by the classical 1-D Child-Langmuir law, even if a significant fraction of the cathode surface is non-emitting.

David Chernin received a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA in 1976. He is currently a Senior Staff Scientist with Leidos Inc., Reston, VA, USA. Since 1984, he has been with Leidos Inc., and its predecessor company SAIC, where he has conducted research on beam-wave interactions and other topics in the physics of particle accelerators and vacuum electron devices.

Y. Y. Lau (M’98–SM’06–F’07-LF’23) received a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA, in 1968, 1970, and 1973, respectively.

He is currently Emeritus Professor with the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, where he has supervised or co-supervised 33 graduated Ph.D. students. He has worked on electron beams, coherent radiation sources, plasmas, and discharges.

Dr. Lau was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 1986. He received the 1999 IEEE Plasma Science and Applications Award and the 2017 IEEE John R. Pierce Award for Excellence in Vacuum Electronics. He served three terms as an Associate Editor for Physics of Plasmas from 1994 to 2002.

John J. Petillo (M’99–SM’12) received a B.S. in electrical engineering from Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA, in 1980, and a Ph.D. in applied plasma physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA, in 1986. His dissertation was on equilibrium and stability analysis of the modified betatron accelerator.

He has been with Leidos Inc., Reston, VA, USA, formerly (Science Applications International Corporation/SAIC), since 1986, first in McLean, VA, USA, and currently in Billerica, MA, USA. Since joining Leidos/SAIC, he has been involved in the research and development of analysis software and analysis and advanced modeling and simulation of RF components, including vacuum electronics, emission physics, accelerator components, microwave devices, ion-beam lithography, and ion thrusters. He has been a Lecturer with the U.S. Particle Accelerator School on several occasions in the area of beam and EM-PIC field modeling. He is currently the Director of the Center for Electromagnetic Science, Leidos Innovation Center (LInC), Leidos Inc., and also the Research and Development Manager and an author of the MICHELLE, MASK, AVGUN, and ARGUS Codes.

Serguei Ovtchinnikov received a B.S. in physics and mathematics and an M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science (numerical analysis) from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA, in 1995, 2001, and 2006, respectively. He is currently a Senior Staff Scientist at Leidos Inc., Billerica, MA, USA. His research interests focus on applications of High Performance Computing (HPC) to computational electromagnetics.

Dongzheng Chen received a B.S. in physics from Peking University, Beijing, China in 2016. He received an M.S. and Ph.D. in materials science and engineering and a M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA, in 2017, 2022, and 2022, respectively. His dissertation was on modeling nonuniform thermionic emission from heterogeneous cathodes.

2023 Transactions on Plasma Science Best Paper Award Co-Authors

Abhijit Jassem received a B.S. in nuclear engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA, in 2016. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. with the University of Michigan’s Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. He is working with the Plasma, Pulsed Power, and Microwave Laboratory, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, under the supervision of Prof. Y. Y. Lau.

Ryan Jacobs received a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in 2010, followed by an M.S. and Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012 and 2015, respectively. He is currently a Research Scientist in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. His work focuses on using atomistic modeling, data science and machine learning (materials informatics) methods to understand the structure and properties of materials at the atomic scale in order to discover and design novel material compounds for a range of technological applications. His main research application areas of interest comprise materials for energy technology, such as solid oxide and protonic fuel cells, batteries, and solar photovoltaics. Another main thrust of his research is the investigation of surface electronic and thermodynamic properties of metals and oxides used as electron emission cathodes. 

Dane Morgan is the Harvey D. Spangler Professor of Engineering in the department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His work combines thermostatistics, thermokinetics, and informatics analysis with atomic-scale calculations to understand and predict materials properties. Morgan is presently training or has graduated/trained over 70 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers and he leads the Informatics Skunkworks, which has helped engage over 400 undergraduates at the interface of data science and science and engineering. He has received multiple teaching and research awards and has published over 350 papers in materials science.

John H. Booske (S’82–M’85–SM’93–F’07) received his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, in 1985. From 1985 to 1989, he was a Research Scientist with the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. In 1990, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW), which he Chaired from 2009-2018. He transitioned to emeritus in 2023 and holds titles of both UW-Madison Vilas Distinguished Achievement and Keith and Jane Nosbusch Professors Emeritus. 

His recent research activities include vacuum electronics, high-power microwave sources and antennas, advanced vacuum cathodes, multipactor discharge science, electromagnetic metamaterials and biological applications of electric and electromagnetic fields. He is a Fellow of the IEEE (2007), the American Physical Society (2011), the Institute of Physics (2022), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2023). He received many teaching awards, including the UW Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, the UW Teaching and Learning Innovation Award, the IEEE Educational Activities Board Major Educational Innovation Award (2014) and the ECE Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) Innovative Program Award (2019). He is a recipient of the IEEE Plasma Science and Applications Prize (2018) and the IEEE John R. Pierce Award for Excellence in Vacuum Electronics (2020).

Steve Gitomer, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science can be reached by E-mail at [email protected]