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Commission on Semiconductors (C8) Young Scientist Prize 2020 Winners
Cheng Gong
“For pioneering the experimental discovery and understanding of novel two-dimensional materials and the highly innovative development of spintronic devices based on such materials”.
Cheng Gong has been an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Quantum Technology Center (QTC) at the University of Maryland, College Park since 2019. His group focuses on magnetic, electronic and optical properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials, nanostructures and nanodevices, studied by a variety of optical and electrical approaches in synergy with density functional theory calculations. From 2014 to 2019, he was a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Berkeley, where he pioneered the discovery of the first magnetic 2D material and innovated the development of spintronic devices based on magnetic 2D materials and heterostructures. He received his Ph.D. in 2013 in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he conducted a series of experimental and theoretical work on the topics of metal-graphene contact, metal-TMD (transition metal dichalcogenides) contact, graphene synthesis and optimization, and graphene oxide reduction and intercalation.
Michael Saliba
“For his pioneering discoveries in the fundamental physical and chemical understanding of phase-stable, long-term durable perovskite semiconductors for sustainable solar cells and light-emitting devices.“
Michael Saliba (@miliba01) is a full professor and the director of the Institute for Photovoltaics (ipv) at Stuttgart University (@SalibaLab) with a dual appointment as Helmholtz Young Investigator at the Research Center Julich, Germany.
Previously, he was a professor at TU Darmstadt, a Group Leader at the University of Fribourg, and a Marie Curie Fellow at EPFL (with a research visit at Stanford), Switzerland. He completed his PhD at Oxford University in 2014 (with a research visit at Cornell) working on crystallization behaviour and plasmonic nanostructures in perovskites. He obtained his MSc in physics at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research on simulation methods for plasmonic oligomers.
In 2016, Saliba was awarded the Young Scientist Award of the German University Association. In 2017, he was awarded the Science Award of the Fraunhofer UMSICHT institute, the René Wasserman Award of EPFL, and the Postdoctoral Award of the Materials Research Societ (MRS). He was also named as one of the World’s 35 Innovators Under 35 by the MIT Technology Review for his pioneering discoveries in the field of perovskite solar cells and optoelectronics. In 2020, he was awarded the Heinz Maier Leibnitz Prize by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In the same year, he was elected as a Board Member of the National Young Academy of Germany, a Young Scientist at the World Economic Forum as well as the Co-Chair of the Global Young Academy.
Michael Saliba has published over 100 works in the topics of plasmonics, lasers, LEDs, and perovskite optoelectronics. Times Higher Education considers him the 3rd most influential scientist in perovskite research based on the number of publications and quality. Since 2018, he is listed as an ISI Highly Cited Researcher.
Saliba was part of many of the early discoveries in the perovskite field. His research focuses on a deeper understanding of novel semiconductor materials such as perovskites which can be used in applications such as solar cells, light-emitting devices, and sensors. He developed and investigated the fundamental properties of a new family of perovskites by adding more stable inorganic metal ions. The new generation of perovskite materials has a substantially suppressed amount of detrimental impurities resulting in a higher temperature, humidity and phase stability with performances close to the theoretical limit. Importantly, solar cell operation at elevated temperature, which is an industrial prerequisite, was successfully demonstrated, which is a key breakthrough for commercialization. The new material design principle has established a new standard for perovskites which is followed by research and industry groups worldwide.
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Commission on Semiconductors (C8) Young Scientist Prize 2018 Winners
Heejun Yang
“For his outstanding contribution to novel interface devices based on structural, electronic, and quantum-state control with van der Waals layered materials.”
Heejun Yang received his PhD in physics with a subject on graphene by scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy (STM/STS) from Seoul National University (Korea) and University Paris-Sud XI (France, a joint degree) in 2010, and experienced industrial device studies in Samsung Electronics from 2010 to 2012. Then, he conducted his research on graphene spintronics in CNRS/Thales as a postdoc from 2012 to 2014. With his research background on molecular and nanometer-scale studies (in Seoul and Paris) and electric and spintronic device physics (in Samsung and CNRS/Thales), he moved to Sungkyunkwan University as an assistant professor on March 2014 and started original device studies with phase engineering of low-dimensional materials. He has proposed novel and conceptual interface devices such as ‘Graphene Barristor’ and ‘Ohmic homojunction contact between semiconductor channel and metal electrodes’.
Jean Christophe Blancon
“For his outstanding contributions to elucidating mechanisms of formation and dissociation of exciton states in solution processed perovskite quantum well semiconductors for efficient optoelectronics.”
Jean Christophe Blancon is a senior research Scientist in the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University (Houston, TX, USA). He graduated from the University of Lyon (France), and completed in 2010 his M.Sc. in physics from the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, and his M.Sc. in optics and photonics from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany). He was a postdoctoral fellow who joined Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA) in 2014 after obtaining his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Lyon in 2013, where he worked on measuring the absolute absorption cross-section of individual single- and double-wall carbon nanotubes. During his four-year postdoctoral appointment at Los Alamos, Jean-Christophe’s main contribution was to elucidate mechanisms of formation and dissociation of exciton states in solution-processed, organic-inorganic, perovskite quantum well semiconductors, which has led to the core design of perovskite-based optoelectronic devices. His work has opened a new direction for tuning the materials chemistry of hybrid perovskite based low dimensional materials and for achieving desired and new emergent functionalities. This work has led to more than 20 publications among which in Nature, Science, Nature communications, and Advanced materials, cited more than 2000 times.
Jean-Christophe’s work focused on understanding multi-scale phenomena in low dimensional hybrid materials and directly correlate nanoscale physical mechanisms, including charge-energy conversion and transfer, to understand macroscopic figures-of-merit and performances of optoelectronics devices such as solar cells, light emitters, detectors, and transistors. His recent focus has been on investigating the interplay between the mechanical, optical, and electronic properties of hybrid perovskites.
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Commission on Semiconductors (C8) Young Scientist Prize 2016 Winners
Kimberly Dick Thelander, Department of Materials Science, Lund University
“For her work to control and understand growth of nanowires, including three-dimensional structures, superlattices, crystal phase engineering and bandgap design”.
Kimberly Thelander is a Professor of Materials Science at Lund University, Lund, Sweden, appointed jointly at the division of Solid State Physics and the Center for Analysis and Synthesis. She completed undergraduate studies in Chemical Physics at the University of Waterloo, Canada, followed by a PhD in Physics from Lund University. Her research is focused on the development of novel materials in nanostructures, specifically focused on unusual polytypes and alloy semiconductors in III-V nanowires. Most recently she is involved in the development of in-situ TEM for real-time investigations of nanowire growth.
Samuel (Sam) Stranks, MIT/University of Cambridge
“For pioneering discoveries in the field of perovskite solar cells and optoelectronics through spectroscopy”.
Sam Stranks is a TED Fellow and a Marie Curie Fellow currently based jointly at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cambridge University. He graduated from Adelaide University in 2007 with a BA and BSc (First Class Honours in Physics) and a University Medal. He completed his PhD as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University with Robin Nicholas, receiving the 2012 Institute of Physics Roy Thesis Prize for his work on carbon nantoube/polymer blends for organic solar cell applications. From 2012-2014, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher in Henry Snaith’s group at Oxford University where he was also a Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College and Lecturer in Physics at Corpus Christi College. He will establish his research group at Cambridge University as a Royal Society University Research Fellow in October 2016.
Sam’s work focuses on understanding and manipulating the optoelectronic properties of metal halide perovskites, which are generating a great deal of attention for their use in high performance solar cells and light-emission applications. He was involved in many of the early breakthroughs in this burgeoning field, including the first reports of long carrier diffusion lengths, visualization of ion migration in these materials, and description of charge carrier recombination kinetics.