Dmitri V. Talapin, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago, has been named the 2011 Materials Research Society Outstanding Young Investigator. Talapin was cited for “methodological developments of synthesis and self-assembly of inorganic nanocrystals and for fundamental studies transforming colloidal nanostructures into electronic and optoelectronic materials.” He will deliver an award talk at the Materials Research Society Spring Meeting in San Francisco.

Talapin has provided key advances toward three of the overarching goals of the field of nanomaterials. He contributed significantly to the methodology of synthesis of nanostructures with complex shapes and compositions. A key development in this area is his discovery and physical/theoretical characterization of nano-heterostructures of “mixed dimensionality”—semiconducting materials with different confinement regimes for electrons and holes. In parallel, Talapin synthesized the first SnTe quantum dots and investigated their optical and electronic properties. He also made key contributions to elucidating the fundamental aspects of self-assembly phenomena, which is critical to rationally creating and controlling new nanostructures.

Talapin has made first field-effect devices assembled of nanocrystals and advanced scientific understanding of the collective interactions in nanocrystal superlattices, which ultimately will establish the fundamental bases for device applications of these materials. And most recently, Talapin found that metal chalcogenide complexes can serve as ligands for colloidal nanocrystals and nanowires and can be thermally converted to semiconducting phases to generate all-inorganic highly conductive nanocrystal solids. Using this approach, he has demonstrated that arrays of semiconductor nanocrystals can develop high charge carrier mobility, suitable for designing efficient field-effect transistors, photodetectors, and solar cells.

Talapin received his diploma in chemistry from Belarusian State University in 1996 and his PhD degree in chemistry from the University of Hamburg in 2002. After serving as a postdoctoral fellow at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (2003–2005) and a staff scientist at the Molecular Foundry in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2005–2007), he joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 2007. In 2010, he received the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. Among Talapin’s other honors are the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship (2009), Sloan Fellowship (2009), NSF CAREER Award (2008), LMUexcellent Fellowship, Germany (2007), IBM Invention Achievement Award (2004, 2006), Belarus National Academy of Sciences Award (1995); and 1st Prize of the USSR Chemistry Olympiad (1991). Talapin has eight patents and over 100 publications. He is an editorial board member of Nanoscale, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry and an invited editor for a special issue of the Journal of Materials Chemistry.