About me
Research Staff Member
Research lab: Almaden Research Center
Donald Stimson Bethune
IBM Almaden Research Center
650 Harry Road
San Jose, CA 95120-6099
tel: 1-408-927-2480
fax: 1-408-927-2100
bethune@almaden.ibm.com
Dr. Bethune is a physicist and Research Staff Member at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif. He was born in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1948. He and wife, Ann, have five children. He received his B.S. in Physics from Stanford University in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Physics from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 for research in nonlinear optics, studying with Prof. Yuen Ron Shen. Dr. Bethune then joined IBM's Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., where he worked on laser spectroscopy in the group of Dr. Peter P. Sorokin, invented the ‘Bethune dye cell’ and co-invented a nonlinear-optical method for nanosecond recording of broadband infrared spectra known as Time-Resolved Infrared Spectral Photography (TRISP). He moved to IBM's San Jose Research Laboratory (Almaden's predecessor) in 1983, where he has worked on nonlinear optics, gas-surface interactions and novel carbon materials such as C60, metallofullerenes and single-wall carbon nanotubes. He and his colleagues recorded the first Raman spectra of C60 and C70, which helped confirm their fullerene structures, measured the rotation rate of buckyballs in C60 crystals, and studied the properties of metallofullerenes such as La@C82, Sc3@C82 and others.
In 1993, Dr. Bethune and his IBM Almaden colleagues discovered that transition metals such as cobalt can catalyze the formation of single-wall carbon nanotubes. In 2002, the American Physical Society awarded the James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials jointly to Bethune and Prof. Sumio Iijima of NEC for their independent discoveries of single-wall carbon nanotubes and methods to produce them using transition-metal catalysts. In 2004, the American Carbon Society Medal was awarded to Bethune, Iijima and Prof. Moribundo Endo of Shinshu University for their outstanding contributions to the discovery of and synthesis work on carbon nanotubes.
Subsequently, Dr. Bethune and colleague William P. Risk co-invented and built an autocompensating fiberoptic quantum cryptography system and invented a novel method for detecting single photons at telecom wavelengths, which they developed into a prototype product that was licensed and is being produced commercially. He is currently working on laser-based tools for immersion lithography, novel memory devices, and is co-developing an optical tweezers setup.
Dr. Bethune is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the Optical Society of America, and is an inventor on nine patents in the areas of optics, carbon materials, quantum cryptography and single-photon detection.
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Media contact for IBM Almaden Research Center: Jenny Hunter
(1-408-927-1261 jennyh@us.ibm.com)
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Last updated 11 Jun 2008