William N. Gill
— Russell Sage Professor of Chemical Engineering,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Education:
— Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, Syracuse University, 1960
— M.S., Psychology, Syracuse University, 1955
— B.S., Chemical Engineering, Syracuse University, 1951

Career Highlights:
Gill began his teaching career in 1960 in the chemical engineering and metallurgy department at Syracuse University. After five years, he became a professor and the chairman of the chemical engineering department at Clarkson College of Technology. In 1971, he joined the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo as dean, provost, and professor of engineering and applied sciences. In 1977 and 1978, he was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at University College London. Gill then spent the next nine years as a professor in the chemical engineering department of SUNY at Buffalo. He concurrently served from 1980 to 1982 as the Glenn Murphy Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Iowa State University. Gill then spent another year abroad as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at the Universities of Queensland and New South Wales. In 1987, Gill joined the Rensselaer faculty as head of the chemical engineering department. Two years later, he was named the Russell Sage Professor of Chemical Engineering.

Gill has earned several other awards and honors including Rensselaer's William H. Wiley Distinguished Faculty Award in 1994 and the Best Paper Award, at TECHCON '96 and '98; he was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in 1991. Gill was named Alumnus of Year in 1977 by Brooklyn Technical High School in recognition of his contributions to engineering education in New York State.

In 1992, Gill was honored with the Lectureship Award from the Chemical Engineering Division of the American Society Engineering Education. He was cited for his "outstanding contributions to fundamental chemical engineering theory and practice." He also has given numerous invited lectures, including a plenary lecture at CHEMCON 2000 in Calcutta, India; the keynote lecture at the 1988 National Heat Transfer Conference, and the Barnett F. Dodge Lecture at Yale University in 1987.

Gill has served as editor of Chemical Engineering Communications since 1979. He has published over 200 refereed articles and has served as a reviewer for numerous prestigious journals, including the Journal of Applied Physics, the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology, and the Journal of The Electrochemical Society.

Research Areas:
Gill's research includes characterization of nanoporous solids, including microstructure, thermal, mechanical, chemical, and electrical properties; field assisted diffusion into nanoporous dielectric films; chemical-mechanical planarization of dual damascene structures; plasma etching of nanoporous dielectrics; and stability of contiguous thin films of metals and nanoporous materials.

His electronic materials research includes processing semiconductors, dielectrics, nanoporous silicon dioxide, and thin metal films. He is also working with chemical vapor deposition and spin-on methods, as well as with the effects of processing on chemical, mechanical, and electrical material properties.

Selected Publications:
W.N. Gill, S. Rogojevic, and T.-M. Lu, "Vapor Deposition of Low-K Polymeric Dielectrics," in Low Dielectric Constant Materials for IC Applications, Eds. P.S. Ho, W.W. Lee, and J. Leu; Springer Verlag, 95-119, (2003).

C.L. Borst, W.N. Gill, and R.J. Gutmann, Chemical-Mechanical Polishing of Low Dielectric Constant Polymers and Organosilicate Glasses: Fundamental Mechanisms and Application to IC Interconnect Technology, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, (2002).

S. Rogojevic, A. Jain, W.N. Gill, and J.L. Plawsky, "Moisture Adsorption in Nanoporous Silica Xerogels," Journal of Electrochemical and Solid State Letters, 5, F22-F23, (2002).

S. Rogojevic, A. Jain, W.N. Gill, and J.L. Plawsky, "Interactions Between Nanoporous Silica and Copper," Journal of the Electrochemical Society, 149, (9), F122-130, (2002).

J.L. Plawsky, F. Wang, and W.N. Gill, "A Reaction Kinetic Model for the Pyrolysis of Polysiloxane Polymers to Form Ceramic Composites," AIChE Journal, 48, (10), 2314-2322, (October 2002).

D.G. Thakurta, D.W. Schwendeman, R.J. Gutmann, S. Shankar, L. Jiang, and W.N. Gill, "Three-Dimensional Wafer-Scale Copper Chemical-Mechanical Planarization Model," Thin Solid Films, 414, 78-90, (2002).

C. L. Borst, D.G. Thakurta, W.N. Gill, and R.J. Gutmann, "Surface Kinetics Model for SiLK Chemical-Mechanical Polishing," Journal of the Electrochemical Society, 149, G118-G130, (2002).

A. Jain, S. Rogojevic, S. Ponoth, W.N. Gill, and J.L. Plawsky, "Processing Dependent Thermal Conductivity in Nanoporous Silica Xerogel Films," Journal of Applied Physics, 91, (5), 3275-3281, (2002).

J.L. Plawsky, A. Jain, S. Rogojevic, and W.N. Gill, "Nanoporous Dielectric Films: Fundamental Property Relations and Microelectronics Applications," in Interlayer Dielectrics for Semiconductor Technologies, eds. S.P. Murarka, M. Eizenberg, and A.K. Sinha, Academic Press, New York, (2002).

C.L. Borst, D.G. Thakurta, W.N. Gill, and R.J. Gutmann, "Chemical-Mechanical Planarization of Low-K Polymers," ASME Journal of Electronic Packaging, 124, (4), 362-366, (2002).

Contact Information:
William N. Gill
202C Ricketts Building
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 Eighth Street
Troy, N.Y. 12180 USA
(518) 276-2880

E-mail: gillw@rpi.edu
www.rpi.edu/~gillw

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