{"id":1664,"date":"2012-11-06T17:41:32","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T17:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ecm.eng.auburn.edu\/wp\/emag\/?p=1664"},"modified":"2012-11-30T17:22:30","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T17:22:30","slug":"1664","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ecm.eng.auburn.edu\/wp\/emag\/?p=1664","title":{"rendered":"It’s my job: Diane Hickey-Davis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Diane<\/a><\/p>\n

Diane Hickey-Davis<\/strong><\/a>, referred to by friends as \u201cDr. Diamond,\u201d incorporates thin film diamond for global semiconductor companies. Pictured here in front of a Class 1000 clean room, she is holding a patterned diamond-on-silicon wafer designed for advanced computing. With a passion for conveying her love of engineering and science to others, she also leads demonstrations for Nanodays at Northwestern University and Sisters-for-Science, participates in robotics competitions and leads sessions at science camps with hands-on nanotechnology demonstrations for kids. In fact, she even met her husband, Mike Davis, a.k.a. \u201cthe science guy of Chicago,\u201d at a NSF Nanotechnology Outreach Conference. Hickey-Davis says their 2-year-old son Giovanni is already exhibiting the signs of an engineer.<\/em><\/p>\n

Diane Hickey-Davis<\/strong>
\n\u201996, chemical engineering<\/strong>
\n \u201904, M.S.,\u201807 Ph.D., materials science and engineering, University of Florida<\/strong>
\n General manager, Semiconductor Business Unit<\/strong>
\n Advanced Diamond Technologies, Chicago<\/strong><\/p>\n

Early years . . .<\/strong> my father, brother, two uncles and grandfather are engineers \u2013 it\u2019s in my blood; my mother worked for a scientific instrument company – I was the only 5-year-old who had \u201cinfrared spectrophotometer\u201d in her vocabulary.<\/p>\n

Typical day . . .<\/strong> I make, study and sell diamond, which is an amazing material – it has a very low coefficient of friction meaning it is slippery. Man-made diamonds, like those that are mined, are made of carbon. The material we make is a polycrystalline thin-film, which is many diamond crystals grown together from carbon in a gas, similar to the way that ice crystals form on a windshield using the water vapor in the air.<\/p>\n

Current projects . . .<\/strong> working with a world-famous scientist to incorporate thin film diamond into a project for the renewable energy industry; coordinating testing for a thermal diamond product that could increase the heat transfer rate in electronic devices to increase efficiency; introducing a new product – an all-diamond probe – into the force microscopy industry.<\/p>\n

My Auburn Engineering . . .<\/strong> taught me to estimate a reasonable answer range before I begin work on the solution, to be reasonable with my significant digits and include error in my answers. Almost daily, I ask for the thickness of a thin-film being produced with data taken using a profilometer and software \u2013 and read by a human. Any engineer knows that specs and tolerances are extremely important – so is being practical and reasonable.<\/p>\n

Turning point . . .<\/strong> assisting with the development of a non-profit science education foundation and realizing how much I missed science. I wanted to know why glass is transparent, why metal feels cold to the touch, and how a computer works, so I pursued my master\u2019s and then realized that grad school was just a big science camp! They paid me a stipend, and let me play on multi-million dollar microscopes and look at rows of atoms in man-made diamonds! How cool is that?<\/p>\n

Geek moment . . .<\/strong> designing my own orange and blue class ring and choosing diamonds with visible defects because I studied defects – two blue diamonds . . . for every one million carbon atoms, there is one boron atom sitting in the lattice – and one orange diamond \u2013 for every 10,000 carbon atoms, there\u2019s one nitrogen atom. Boron and nitrogen are “p” and “n” type dopants, making my ring a “p-n-p” junction. Engineers love it.<\/p>\n

Sense of pride . . .<\/strong> the common thread that runs throughout my career started at Auburn – I helped initiate the Cupola Engineering Ambassadors with a mission to \u201cpromote, unify and serve the College of Engineering.\u201d Those tenants have impacted every aspect of my life – promoting science and engineering, explaining the impact it has on our lives, and unifying people for common causes.<\/p>\n

<\/div>
\"Flickr\"<\/a> view  Auburn Engineering<\/a> on flickr   \"Auburn<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diane Hickey-Davis, referred to by friends as \u201cDr. Diamond,\u201d incorporates thin film diamond for global semiconductor companies. Pictured here in front of a Class 1000 clean room, she is holding a patterned diamond-on-silicon wafer designed for advanced computing. With a passion for conveying her love of engineering and science to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[33,65,64,66,43,52,42],"yoast_head":"\nIt's my job: Diane Hickey-Davis » Auburn Engineer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/ecm.eng.auburn.edu\/wp\/emag\/?p=1664\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It's my job: Diane Hickey-Davis » Auburn Engineer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Diane Hickey-Davis, referred to by friends as \u201cDr. Diamond,\u201d incorporates thin film diamond for global semiconductor companies. 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