Postdoctoral Researcher - Autonomous Experimentation Semiconductor Materials

Posting

Title:

Postdoctoral Researcher – Autonomous Experimentation for Semiconductor Materials.

Location:

CO – Golden.

Position Type:
Postdoc (Fixed Term).

Hours Per Week: 40.

Working at NLR: NLR is located at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Golden, Colorado – the nation's primary laboratory for energy systems research and development. Join the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), where world-class scientists, engineers, and experts are accelerating energy innovation through breakthrough research and systems integration. From our mission to our collaborative culture, NLR stands out in the research community for its commitment to an affordable and secure energy future.

Spanning foundational science to applied systems engineering and analysis, we focus on solving complex challenges to deliver advanced, secure, reliable, and cost-effective energy solutions. Our work helps strengthen U.S. industries, support job creation, and promote national economic growth. At NLR, you’ll find a mission-driven environment supported by state-of-the-art facilities, multidisciplinary research teams, and strong collaborations with industry, academia, and other national laboratories.

We offer robust professional development opportunities, and a competitive benefits package designed to support your career and well-being.

Job Description:

A postdoctoral research position is available in the Materials Discovery and Development group, focused on autonomous experimentation at the intersection of semiconductor materials research, artificial intelligence methods, and research equipment automation. Our team is developing a next-generation autonomous semiconductor research laboratory as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s METALLIC platform. The successful candidate will support building closed-loop experimental systems that integrate advanced scientific instrumentation, AI-driven decision-making, data infrastructure, and workflow orchestration.

The platform will accelerate the discovery of advanced thin film inorganic semiconductor materials that address critical U.S. supply chain challenges, with particular emphasis on semiconductor technologies involving Ga, Ge, Sc and other critical elements and materials. The successful candidate will also have opportunities to contribute to broader autonomous experimentation initiatives across NLR, including the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission projects aimed to accelerate scientific discovery in wurtzite oxide and nitride wide band-gap semiconductor, as well as dielectric, piezoelectric, and ferroelectric materials.

As a part of these projects, the successful candidate will develop and apply autonomous experimentation approaches across multiple synthesis and characterization instruments, including vacuum deposition systems such as sputtering, pulsed laser deposition, and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), as well as advanced property characterization tools, such as photoluminescence, profilometry, J-V, C-V, P-E and other electrical measurements, that complement combinatorial structural (XRD) and compositional (XRF) data.

This position offers an opportunity to develop and deploy new approaches in AI-driven experimentation, scientific software, robotics, and laboratory automation across a large and rapidly evolving set of experimental instruments. As part of this position, the successful candidate will:

• Design and deploy advanced algorithms and closed-loop workflows for autonomous experimentation on synthesis and characterization instruments.
• Integrate laboratory instrumentation, data infrastructure, and workflow orchestration systems into scalable autonomous experimentation platforms.
• Deploy the developed computer vision, robotics, and artificial intelligence methods to solve challenging materials science and semiconductor research problems.
• Collaborate with materials scientists, engineers, and research technologists to apply autonomous experimentation approaches to other research projects.
• Proactively diagnose and troubleshoot scientific instrumentation, automation hardware, and software interfaces in accordance with safety practices and operational procedures.

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