Associate Professor of Chemistry
email: p_yang@berkeley.edu
office: B68 Hildebrand
phone: 510.643.1545
fax: 510.642.7301
lab: D8, B54, B34, BG7, BG6, B70, and 39 Hildebrand
Research Interests
Materials Chemistry, Inorganic chemistry — Low-dimensional nanoscopic building blocks are used to assemble complex architectures with novel electronic and photonic properties.
One-dimensional (1D) nanostructures are of both fundamental and technological interest. They not only exhibit interesting electronic and optical properties intrinsically associated with their low dimensionality and the quantum confinement effect, but also represent the critical components in the potential nanoscale device applications. With the ever-decreasing sizes of these 1D nanostructures, the "bottom-up" chemical approach is playing increasing role due to its capability of making much smaller features as compared to the "top-down" approach. Major challenge, however, remains in order to fully exploit the 1D nanostructures, namely, the development of suitable chemical strategies for the rational synthesis, organization and integration of these nanoscale building blocks.
The Yang research group is interested in the synthesis of new classes of materials and nanostructures with an emphasis on developing new synthetic approaches and understanding the fundamental issues of structural assembly and growth that will enable the rational control of material composition, micro/nano- structure, property and functionality. We are putting together a nanoscale toolbox where nanowires of different compositions and properties will be used as building blocks in our continuing efforts in miniaturizing optoelectronic devices. For example, semiconductor nanowires are being synthesized using chemical vapor deposition/transport and pulsed laser ablation. We are also exploring synthetic conditions for size controlled nanowire growth, nanowire network and array growth. Significant effort has also been placed on investigating the novel physical properties of the nanowire building blocks. Due to their high surface area, low-dimensionality and potential quantum confinement, many new physical properties and new physics are expected. These novel properties serve as the basis for miniaturized devices such as laser, photovoltaics, switch and sensors.
The chemistry and physics we developed in previous years will be critical for the group research in forthcoming years. The collection of nanowires of different compositions and properties serves as excellent building blocks for our assembly and integration study. This assembly work represents our efforts towards building complex functional architecture and systems with nanowire building blocks. Future work in the group will primarily focus on chemical integration, self-organization, and physical property studies of these 1D building blocks. Major efforts will be placed on increasing the complexity of 1-dimensional nanostructures by incorporating well-defined heterojunctions and addressing the impact of structural complexity on specific functionalities, such as light emission and energy conversion properties. Significant efforts will also be devoted to develop efficient chemical processes to assemble individual nanowires into desired configurations or system architectures.
Biography
Associate Professor, born 1971; B. A. Chemistry, University of Science and Technology in China (1993); Ph. D. Chemistry, Harvard University (1997); Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Santa Barbara (1997-1999); Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award (1999); 3M Untenured Faculty Award (2000). Research Innovation Award (2001); Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (2001); NSF CAREER Award (2001); Hellman Family Faculty Award (2001); ACS ExxonMobil Solid State Chemistry Award (2001); Beckman Young Investigator Award (2002). MIT Tech. Review TR 100 (2003); ChevronTexaco Chair in Chemistry, Berkeley (2003); First Chairperson for American Chemical Society, Nanoscience subdivision (2003); Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2004); Dupont Young Professor Award (2004), Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics (2004), MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award (2004), ACS Pure Chemistry Award (2005), University of Wisconsin McElvain Lectureship (2006), Chinese Academy of Science Molecular Science Forum Lectureship (2006). Member: American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, Materials Research Society.