Charles M. Lieber
Wolf Prize Laureate in Chemistry 2012
Charles M. Lieber
Affiliation at the time of the award:
Harvard Univerity, USA
Award citation:
“for developing new methods to control the shape and heterostructure of nanowires, for characterizing their physical properties, and for demonstrating their potential applications”.
Prize share:
Charles M. Lieber
A. Paul Alivisatos
Prof. Lieber has introduced new paradigms in the growth of a broad range of nanometer diameter wires and heterostructures. His contributions have provided a comprehensive tool box for systematic growth of materials heterostructures and devices, with the demonstrated potential for contributions to areas ranging from computing and Communications to biology and medicine.
The most significant breakthrough made by Lieber was his creation of a general method for the synthesis of single crystal semiconductor nanowires based on the nanocluster-catalyzed growth model. This work provided the intellectual underpinnings for the predictable growth of nanowires of virtually all main group materials in the periodic table, and enabled Lieber to demonstrate control of electronic properties through doping and size limits with molecular-scale nanowires. He proposed and demonstrated a general concept for the growth of nanoscale axial heterostructures, nanowire-nanotube heterojunctions and the growth nanowire superlattices with novel photonic and electronic properties. In addition, Lieber pioneer the concept of both radial core-shell structures, and three-dimensionally-branched nanowires.
In addition to his rich contributions to the characterization of carbon nanotubes with STM and AFM, Lieber has made pioneering contributions illuminating the electrical, optical and optoelectronic properties of semiconductor nanowires, and has demonstrated unique ballistic and quantum transport in specifically designed core/shell nanowires.
By combining his advances in controlled synthesis and understanding physical properties of nanowires Lieber has provided seminal examples of nanotechnologies. He has exploited semiconductor nanowire building blocks to fashion an array of nanoscale functional electronic and optoelectronic devices, including the first p-n diode junctions, active bipolar transistors, field-effect transistor, complementary inverters, point-like nanoscale light-emitting diodes, and electrically-driven single nanowire lasers.
Prof. Lieber has made seminal advances at the interface between nanoelectronics and biological systems. He recognized the duality of chemical/biological and electronic signaling at the nanoscale to demonstrate the first direct electrical detection of proteins, and pushed this concept to the level with selective electrical sensing of individual viruses, and ultrahigh sensitivity detection of cancer markers.
He has pioneered the usage of nanodevices to record electrical activity from cultured neurons and cardiac cells as well as tissue samples, demonstrating unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution for fundamental neurobiology and medicine.