Harold M. Manasevit (November 1, 1927 - March 25, 2008) pioneered metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE), or as Hal and many of his colleagues called it, metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD)

while employed at Autonetics, Division of North American Rockwell in the 1960's. Hal created the term "MOCVD" to indicate that the chemical vapor deposition process was an extremely flexible approach and could be used to deposit a wide range of materials, including epitaxial, growth of III-V semiconductors by MOCVD in 1968, and subsequently reported the heteroepitaxial growth of GaAs, AIAs, AIGaAs, InP, InAIAs, AIN, GaN, and GaP, etc., on sapphire and other oxide substrates. In addition, he was the first to describe the heteroepitaxial growth of II-VI and IV-VI compound semiconductors on insulators and the first to produce superconducting films on insulators.

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The impact of Hal's work on MOCVD is truly extensive. Today, MOCVD is the dominant materials technology used for the production of light-emitting diodes, injection lasers, compound-semiconductor solar cells, advanced high-speed bipolar transistor electronics, avalanche photodiodes, as well as for the deposition of various coatings and thin films.