The Materials Research Society has named Peidong Yang of the University of California–Berkeley and founder of Alphabet Energy, Inc., as MRS Medalist. He was cited for “outstanding contributions in the creative synthesis and assembly of semiconductor nanowires and their heterostructures, and innovations in nanowire-based photonics, thermoelectrics, solar energy conversion and nanofluidic applications.” Yang will be recognized during the awards ceremony at the 2011 MRS Fall Meeting in Boston, where he will also give an award talk on “Semiconductor nanowires for solar energy conversion.” Yang will give his presentation on Wednesday, November 30 at 12:15 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel.

Yang, an MRS fellow and former recipient of the MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award, has contributed broad-ranging breakthroughs to nanoscience and nanotechnology. He developed new and general approaches for the synthesis of metal oxide and semiconductor nanowires which opened significant opportunities for fundamental studies of the optical and electronic properties of quantum-confined and periodic systems, and applications of these materials for nanoelectronics and nanophotonics. His seminal optical studies of zinc oxide nanowires mark the discovery and demonstration of the first nanoscale laser in which the nanowire itself defines the optical cavity.

In the area of nanophotonics, Yang recently made seminal contributions to renewable energy through his studies of a nanowire-enabled dye-sensitized solar cell and a core–shell nanowire solar cell. By introducing the novel idea of a nanowire-based solar cell, Yang has demonstrated an ideal platform to independently study and optimize light absorption, charge separation, and charge collection. More recently, his group has been exploring the possibility of using the high-surface-area nanowire arrays as photoelectrodes for the purpose of artificial photosynthesis. Yang is currently the Department Head and North Site Director of the Department of Energy, Joint Center of Artificial Photosynthesis.

After receiving a BS degree in chemistry from the University of Science and Technology of China (1993) and a PhD degree in chemistry from Harvard University (1997), Yang did postdoctoral research on mesoporous materials at the University of California–Santa Barbara. He began his faculty appointment at Berkeley in 1999. Yang is an Alfred P. Sloan research fellow (2001–2004), and has been awarded a Camille Dreyfus New Faculty Award, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Young Investigator Award, ExxonMobil Solid State Chemistry Fellowship, Dupont Young Professorship, Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics, the American Chemical Society Pure Chemistry Award, Baekeland Medal, and the NSF Waterman Award.