MRS Medal
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- November 28 - December 2, 2011
- Hynes Convention Center, Boston, MA
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Meeting Chairs:
Cammy R. Abernathy, Paul V. Braun, Masashi Kawasaki, Kathryn J. Wahl
Wednesday, November 30 | 12:05 - 1:30 pm
Sheraton Hotel, Level 2, Grand Ballroom
On Wednesday, November 30, the session of Symposium X will remain devoted to the Medalist Award, and there are two scheduled presentations as follows:
- 12:05-12:45 pm
Peidong Yang - Semiconductor Nanowires for Solar Energy Conversion
- 12:45-1:25 pm
Z. L. Wang - From Nanogenerators to Piezotronics–A Decade Study of ZnO Nanostructures
Peidong Yang - University of California, Berkeley
Peidong Yang (view bio)
University of California, Berkeley
“for outstanding contributions in the creative synthesis and assembly of semiconductor nanowires and their heterostructures, and innovations in nanowire‐based photonics, thermoelectrics, solar energy conversion and nanofluidic applications.”
MRS Medal Award Talk Presentation: Semiconductor Nanowires for Solar Energy Conversion
(view abstract)
Peidong Yang received a BS in chemistry from University of Science and Technology of China (1993) and a PhD in chemistry from Harvard University (1997). He did postdoctoral research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before joining the Department of Chemistry faculty at the University of California, Berkeley (1999). He is currently a professor in the Department of Chemistry, Materials Science and Engineering, and a senior faculty scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Yang is the Department Head/North Site Director of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) at LBNL. He is the deputy director for the Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems. Yang is an associate editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society and also serves on the editorial advisory boards for a number of journals, including Acct. Chem. Res. and Nano. Lett.
The founder of the Nanoscience subdivision within the American Chemical Society (ACS), Yang has also co-founded two startups, Nanosys Inc., and Alphabet Energy, Inc. He is the recipient of the Materials Research Society (MRS) Medal; the Baekeland Medal; the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship; the Arnold and Mabel Beckman, National Science Foundation, and MRS Young Investigator Awards; the Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics; the ACS Pure Chemistry Award; and the Alan T. Waterman Award. He was recently elected an MRS Fellow. According to ISI (Thomas Reuters), for the past decade, Yang has been ranked number one in materials science and number ten in chemistry based on average citations per paper. His main research interest is in the area of one-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures and their applications in nanophotonics and energy conversion.
Semiconductor nanowires represent an important class of nanostructure building block for photovoltaics as well as direct solar-to-fuel application, because of their high surface area, tunable bandgap, light-trapping capabilities, and efficient charge transport and collection. The generation of fuels by the direct conversion of solar energy in a fully integrated system is an attractive goal; however, no such system has been demonstrated that shows the required efficiency, is sufficiently durable, or can be manufactured at reasonable cost. It requires major research advancement in the area of semiconductor light absorber and catalyst discovery. One of the most critical issues in solar water splitting is the development of a suitable photo-anode with high efficiency and long-term durability in an aqueous and photo-oxidative environment. Nanowires can be readily designed and synthesized to deterministically incorporate heterojunctions with improved light absorption, charge separation, and vectorial charge transport. High surface-area nanowire arrays can serve as photocathodes and photo-anodes within an artificial photosynthetic system. Meanwhile, it is also possible to selectively decorate different oxidation or reduction catalysts onto specific segments of the nanowires to mimic the compartmentalized reactions in natural photosynthesis. The bottom-up synthetic approach for the semiconductor nanowires also enables several important principles of sustainability in materials and technology development, namely, using earth-abundant elements and using less energy-intensive processes. In this talk, I will highlight several recent examples from this lab, using semiconductor nanowires and their heterostructures for the purpose of solar-to-electricity and solar-to-chemical energy conversion.
ZL Wang - Georgia Institute of Technology
Zhong Lin (Z.L.) Wang (view bio)
Georgia Institute of Technology“for seminal contributions in the discovery, controlled synthesis, and fundamental understanding of ZnO nanowires and nanobelts, and the design and fabrication of novel, nanowire-based nanosensors, piezotronic devices, and nanogenerators.”
MRS Medal Award Talk Presentation: From Nanogenerators to Piezotronics–A Decade Study of ZnO Nanostructures (view abstract)
Dr. Zhong Lin (ZL) Wang received his PhD from Arizona State University in 1987. He now is the Hightower Chair in Materials Science and Engineering, Regents' Professor, Engineering Distinguished Professor and Director, Center for Nanostructure Characterization, at Georgia Tech. Dr. Wang is a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, fellow of American Physical Society, fellow of AAAS, fellow of Microscopy Society of America and fellow of Materials Research Society. Dr. Wang has made original and innovative contributions to the synthesis, discovery, characterization and understanding of fundamental physical properties of oxide nanobelts and nanowires, as well as applications of nanowires in energy sciences, electronics, optoelectronics and biological science. He is a world leader in studying ZnO nanostructures. His discovery and breakthroughs in developing nanogenerators establish the principle and technological road map for harvesting mechanical energy from environment and biological systems for powering a personal electronics. His research on self-powered nanosystems has inspired the worldwide effort in academia and industry for studying energy for micro-nano-systems. He coined and pioneered the field of piezotronics and piezo-phototronics by introducing piezoelectric potential gated charge transport process in fabricating new electronic and optoelectronic devices. This breakthrough by redesign CMOS transistor has important applications in smart MEMS/NEMS, nanorobotics, human-electronics interface and sensors. Dr. Wang’s publications have been cited for over 44,000 times. The H-index of his citations is 101. Details can be found at: http://www.nanoscience.gatech.edu
Developing wireless nanodevices and nanosystems is of critical importance for sensing, medical science, environmental/infrastructure monitoring, defense technology, and even personal electronics. It is highly desirable for wireless devices to be self powered without using battery, without which most of the sensor network may be impossible. The piezoelectric nanogenerators that we developed have the potential to serve as self-sufficient power sources for micro-/nanosystems. For wurtzite structures that have non-central symmetry, such as ZnO, GaN and InN, a piezoelectric potential (piezopotential) is created in the crystal by applying a strain. The nanogenerator is invented by using the piezopotential as the driving force for electrons to flow in responding to a dynamic straining of piezoelectric nanowires [1-5]. A gentle straining can produce an output voltage of up to 20-40 V from an integrated nanogenerator. Furthermore, piezopotential in the wurtzite structure can serve as a “gate” voltage that can effectively tune/control the charge transport across an interface/junction; electronics based on such a mechanism are coined as piezotronicsI [6-8], with applications in force/pressure triggered/controlled electronic devices, sensors, logic units and memory. By using the piezotronic effect, we show that the optoelectronc devices fabricated using wurtzite materials can give superior performance as solar cell, photon detector, and light-emitting diode [9-11]. Piezotronic is likely to serve as a “mediator” for directly interfacing biomechanical action with silicon-based technology.
[1] Z.L. Wang and J.H. Song, Science, 312 (2006) 242-246.
[2] X.D. Wang, J.H. Song J. Liu, and Z.L. Wang, Science, 316 (2007) 102-105.
[3] Y. Qin, X.D. Wang and Z.L. Wang, Nature, 451 (2008) 809-813.
[4] R.S. Yang, Y. Qin, L.M. Dai and Z.L. Wang, Nature Nanotechnology, 4 (2009) 34-39.
[5] S. Xu, Y. Qin, C. Xu, Y.G. Wei, R.S. Yang, Z.L. Wang, Nature Nanotechnology, 5 (2010) 366 - 373
[6] Z.L. Wang, Nano Today 5 (2010) 540.
[7] W.Z. Wu, Y.G. Wei and Z.L. Wang, Adv. Materials, 22 (2010) 4711.
[8] W.Z. Wu and Z.L. Wang, Nano Letters, 11 (2011) 2779
[9] Y.F. Hu, Y.L. Chang, P. Fei, R.L. Snyder and Z.L. Wang, ACS Nano, 4 (2010) 1234.
[10] Q. Yang, X. Guo, W.H. Wang, Y. Zhang, S. Xu, D.H. Lien, Z.L. Wang, ACS Nano, 4 (2010) 6285.
[11] Q. Yang, W.H. Wang, S. Xu, Z.L. Wang, Nano Letters, dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl202619d.
[12] for details: www.nanoscience.gatech.edu
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