Joe Lyding, standing next to the STM in his lab at Beckman, earned an excellent teacher rating in 2005 while his research efforts have led to breakthroughs such as single-molecule absorption spectroscopy.
Risky moves, creative research strategies, and enjoying the work are not only what Joe Lyding practices; they are also what he preaches.
Joe Lyding came to Illinois in 1984 to work with the legendary John Bardeen and explore a research path that seemed paved with potential. As a young professor and researcher Lyding started off growing crystals for the two - time Nobel Prize winner and colleague John Tucker as part of their group’s focus on charged density waves.
A year later Lyding heard an invited talk at a professional meeting about a revolutionary new instrument for atomic scale microscopy and everything changed. He had never heard of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) that IBM researcher Gerd Binnig was describing, but his initial reaction was “wow.” His second was that he had to make one of his own.
It took a year and numerous after-hours visits to a student machine shop before Lyding was actually able to build an STM, finishing just a month in fact before Binnig and colleague Heinrich Rohrer won the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the technology. But once the 12-foot tall, four-foot wide instrument was finished to Lyding’s satisfaction, the University of Illinois had one of the few STMs in the world and Lyding had a new career path.
“Once we got atomic resolution, I just dumped what I was doing before and jumped into that,” Lyding said. “It was kind of a risky move for an assistant professor but it worked out.”
Lyding’s accomplishments attest to the wisdom of his decision. His discoveries in the areas of microscopy and micro- and nanoscale research and technology are known throughout the fields of physics, materials science, and engineering.
A year after building that first STM, Lyding was mowing his lawn when an idea for an ultra-stable version popped into his head.
His design of a series of interconnected ultrahigh vacuum STMs served as one of the cornerstone technologies of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology during its early years, and today’s refined versions remain a key part of various interdisciplinary research projects. This new design has been copied worldwide and has been licensed by the University of Illinois for commercial production
Lyding’s career as a researcher has been intertwined with the STM, which provides both visualization and manipulation at the micro- and nanoscale. But he has used the technology to branch off in many directions, including collaborations involving transistor technology and development of an atomic resolution patterning technique.
It’s possible none of it would have happened if he had stuck with his original work on electrical measurements of charged density waves.