Brelon May is an applied physicist at Idaho National Laboratory using techniques to deposit single crystalline thin films. He is focused on ways of making single-crystalline actinide materials to better understand the thermal transport of nuclear fuels. However, he is also interested in pushing actinide beyond nuclear energy by looking at the interplay between superconductivity and magnetism, and integrating them with wide bandgap materials. Before joining INL he was a postdoctoral researcher at National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, where he worked on reducing the cost of high efficiency solar cells, developing technology to increase energy efficiency and sustainability through combining traditional III-V material deposition techniques with new elements. He earned his doctorate in materials science and engineering from The Ohio State University. He holds a bachelor’s in chemical engineering from Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., and has studied abroad at Luleå Tekniska Univeritet, in Luleå, Sweden.​​

Thin films, heteroepitaxy, MBE, superconductivity, magnetism, optoelectronics, diffraction