Ali Javey, associate professor at the University of California–Berkeley, has been named a 2015 Materials Research Society (MRS) Outstanding Young Investigator. Javey was cited “for innovative contributions in integrating nanomaterials into device applications.” He will be presented with the award at the 2015 MRS Spring Meeting in San Francisco.

Javey developed a novel contact printing strategy for depositing highly uniform, well-aligned, clean monolayer films of semiconductor nanowires with controlled density. His approach represents an implementation of the “bottom-up” paradigm that is general to the material, substrate, and dimensionality of structures. He used this approach to assemble three-dimensional nanoelectronic structures consisting of up to 10 vertically stacked layers of functional nanowire transistors, and novel multifunctional structures consisting of logic gates and nonvolatile memory in distinct, addressable layers. This work has opened up a unique area of nanoscience.

Using the contact printing process, his group demonstrated successful heterogeneous assembly of nanowires for an all-integrated image sensor circuitry in which hundreds of thousands of optically active CdSe and high-mobility Ge/Si nanowires are controllably assembled into arrays of functional circuit elements, demonstrating the versatility of the contact printing process and the unique functionality of nanowire materials. This sensor circuit integration presents the largest functional circuit array demonstrated to date based on any synthetic nanomaterials, and presents a unique route toward utilization of nanowire arrays for printable sensor circuitry.

The integration of high mobility materials on Si can be challenging due to largelattice mismatch, and Javey has confronted this challenge by developing an approach he has termed the X-on-insulator (XOI), which has allowed for some of the highest mobilities on Si substrates.

Javey is a faculty member in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California–Berkeley. He earned his PhD degree in physical chemistry from Stanford University. He received the Nano Letters Young Investigator Lectureship, UC Berkeley Electrical Engineering Outstanding Teaching Award, APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research, and Education, Netexplorateur of the Year Award, IEEE Nanotechnology Early Career Award, and he was a Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists Finalist.