Younan Xia, Georgia Institute of Technology, has received the 2017 Materials Research Society (MRS) Medal “for seminal contributions to shape-controlled synthesis of metal nanocrystals with a major impact on catalysis, plasmonics and biomedicine.” Xia will be recognized during the Awards Ceremony at the 2017 MRS Fall Meeting in Boston.

Xia holds the Brock Family Chair and GRA Eminent Scholar in Nanomedicine position at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his BS degree from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1987, his MS degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993, and his PhD degree from Harvard in 1996. His group has invented a myriad of nanomaterials for applications in catalysis, plasmonics, electronics, display, energy, and medicine. His technology on silver nanowires has been commercialized for the fabrication of flexible, transparent, and conductive films central to touchscreen display and flexible electronics. Xia has co-authored more than 700 publications. He has been named by Times Higher Education and Thomson Reuters as one of the Top 10 Chemists and Materials Scientists in the world. He has also received many prestigious awards, including the ACS Award in the Chemistry of Materials, NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, and NSF Early Career Development Award.

In his presentation, Xia will discuss how to address the urgent need to maximize the utilization efficiency of noble metals (some of the least abundant elements in the Earth’s crust) and thus attain affordable and sustainable products. One approach is based on the development of hollow nanocrystals with well-defined and controllable facets, while their walls are kept below five atomic layers (or 1 nm) in thickness. He will start with a brief introduction to two methods that have been developed for the production of such nanomaterials, with the first involving layer-by-layer atomic deposition followed by etching, and the second involving galvanic replacement with a sacrificial template. Xia will then showcase some remarkable properties and applications of this novel class of nanomaterials, including their use as cost-effective catalysts for energy conversion, as carriers for controlled release and drug delivery, and as theranostic agents for cancer medicine. He will conclude with a discussion on some barriers to the commercialization of these nanomaterials.