Prize Recipient

Hongjie Dai
Stanford University

"For developing novel synthesis pathways for preparing carbon and boron nitride nanotubes and for pioneering applications of these for sensing, electronics and nanomechanics."

Hongjie Dai was born in Shaoyang, Hunan, P. R. China. He received his B.S. degree from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1989, his M.S. from Columbia University in 1991, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1994. After postdoctoral work with Richard E. Smalley at Rice University, in 1997, he joined the faculty of the Chemistry Department at Stanford University where he is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry. Prior to the APS James McGroddy Prize for 2006, he received the Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics in 2004, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 2002, the American Chemical Society Pure Chemistry Award in 2002, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in 2001, and a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering in 1999.

Hongjie Dai’s research group has developed chemical vapor deposition synthesis methods for carbon nanotubes, including deterministic synthesis of nanotube arrays useful for integration into various devices for quantum transport and other mesoscopic physics studies. His group has developed nanosensors for gas and biological molecules based on carbon nanotubes, and carried out fundamental electrical and electromechanical studies of these novel materials. The nanotube synthesis methods developed by the Dai group have led to high quality devices including suspended nanotubes for elucidating phase coherent transport phenomena, electron-phonon scattering, and non-equilibrium hot phonon effects. Dai’s group has also advanced high performance nanotube field effect transistors with ohmic contacts, integrated high-k gate dielectrics and ballistic transport properties. The latest research direction in Dai’s group include interfacing carbon nanotubes with biological systems for novel nanobiotechnology applications. These include nanotube based intracellular molecular transporters for delivery of proteins, DNA and RNA and using nanotubes as novel near infrared antennas for nucleic acid delivery and cancer cell destruction.

Myron B. Salamon (Chair), Neville V. Smith (12/05), Yoshinori Tokura ('05 winner)(12/05), James Chelikowsky (V. Chair)(12/06), Robert Nemanich (12/06)