C. Thomas Elliott

Who is C. Thomas Elliott?

Charles Thomas Elliott, FRS, CBE, is a leading scientist in the fields of narrow gap semiconductor and infrared detector research. Hailing from county Durham, after gaining his Ph.D., he worked at the University of Manchester before joining RRE in Malvern, Worcestershire in the late 1960s. In the 1970s he invented the SPRITE detector which was also known as the TED. This was a photoconductor device in which the infrared scene was scanned across the detector at the same rate as the carriers drifted under an applied controlled constant bias current. This device decame part of TICM - the standard UK thermal imaging common module used since the 1980s by UK armed forces. Tom Elliott received a Rank Prize in 1982 for this work and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1988.

Tom Elliott also contributed to the development of the semiconductor indium antimonide as an infrared detector, magnetic sensor and fast, low voltage transistor material. He was involved in the exploitation of negative luminescence in diode structures.

He retired from the successor to RRE, DERA in 1999 and is an honorary professor at Heriot-Watt University.