Outstanding Young Investigator Award Given to Alivisatos for Nanocrystal Research
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Outstanding Young Investigator Award Given to Alivisatos for Nanocrystal Research A. Paul Alivisatos is the 1995 recipient of the Materials Research Society's Outstanding Young Investigator Award. Alivisatos, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California—Berkeley, is cited "for leadership in materials research, notably in the field of nanocrystals." The Outstanding Young Investigator Award recognizes exceptional, interdisciplinary scientific work in materials research by a young scientist or engineer who also shows excellent promise as a developing leader in the materials area. Alivisatos has gained recognition for his study of synthesis and characterization of semiconductor nanocrystals, which are clusters of 10s to 10,000s of atoms with electrical properties intermediate between those of bulk and molecular materials. For instance, they may have the crystalline order of bulk materials, but show bandgap changes brought about by their small size. The unique properties of these clusters can be retained after assembly of the clusters into defined structures, as Alivisatos has demonstrated. His most significant scientific contributions relate to phase transitions in nanocrystals, nanocrystalline surface characterization, optical properties of nanocrystals, and incorporation of nanocrystals into light emitting diodes. Alivisatos received a Bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1981 from the University of Chicago. He attended the University of California—Berkeley, where he earned his PhD degree with Charles Harris, professor of chemistry, based on the photophysics of electronically excited molecules near metal and semiconductor surfaces. In 1986 he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in a postdoctoral position, where he was instrumental in setting up a collaborative research effort with Louis Brus and Michael Steigerwald. From this work new synthetic techniques involving arrested precipitation were developed to allow the production of CdS and CdSe nanocrystals with a narrow size distribution, within a variance of only a few percent. In 1988, he joined the faculty of the University of California—Berkeley as an assistant professor of chemistry and was promoted to associate professor in 1992.
MRS BULLETIN/FEBRUARY 1995
A. Paul Alivisatos
Last year he obtained the position of full professor. Alivisatos has performed elegant studies of phase transitions in systems of finite size, and has constructed "phase diagrams" for these systems. In particular, he has measured the melting points of CdS particles as a function of their size and has determined the pressure dependence of solid-solid phase transitions in this system. By comparing his results to corresponding properties of bulk CdS, he was able to do the first systematic thermodynamic characterization of matter in this size regime. What sets Alivisatos apart from his peers is his interdisciplinary and multifaceted approach to studying these nanocrystalline systems. His work requires a thorough understanding of the chemistry and physics of nanocrystals an
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