Dr. Yves Chabal

Established in 2007, the chair was made possible by the Texas Nanoelectronics Research Superiority Initiative, which is a joint venture between the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, The University of Texas System, UT Dallas, UT Austin, UT Arlington and private industry. Chabal was appointed to the chair in January 2008.


“This endowed chair gave me the ability to do things that I couldn’t do before.”

Dr. Yves Chabal is an authority on semiconductor surfaces, semiconductor materials and the interfaces between them – all of which are central to developing future generations of microchips.

Chabal and colleagues are seeking the keys to the future for a number of technologies, including microelectronics, energy harvesting and sensors. The projects also include finding ways to use hydrogen to store energy for fuel economy and an investigation of electronic conduction in organic materials by paying special attention to contact issues. Still other studies assess biosensors and graphene, devising ways to implement electronic detection of biological species. The research teams led by Chabal occupy significant lab space in the Natural Science and Engineering Research Laboratory. Their work is interdisciplinary in nature, with collaborations in physics, chemistry, materials science and chemical/biomedical/electrical engineering. Chabal’s lab has worked with UT Southwestern Medical Center. He has ongoing collaborations with National Laboratories, with laboratories in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Singapore and Japan, and with U.S. industries.

Chabal earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Princeton University in 1974 and a doctorate in physics from Cornell University in 1980. He pursued postdoctoral work at Bell Labs, where he then worked for two decades before he was appointed director of the Laboratory for Surface Modification at Rutgers University. He came to UT Dallas in 2007 to head the Department of Materials Science & Engineering.

The American Physical Society awarded the Davisson Germer Prize to Chabal in 2009, recognizing his development of methods to better understand atomic processes that take place on silicon surfaces, which constitute an important platform for the multibillion-dollar semiconductor industry. In 2012, Chabal received the Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in Chemical Sciences by the American Chemical Society and the Medard W. Welch Award by AVS Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces and Processing.

Chabal is also a fellow of both the American Vacuum Society and the American Physical Society.