      
|
Pulickel M. Ajayan
— Director, Focus Center-New York, Rensselaer;
Interconnections for Gigascale Integration
— Henry Burlage Professor of Engineering,
Materials Science and Engineering,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Education:
— B. Tech., Metallurgical Engineering,
Banaras Hindu University, India, 1985
— Ph. D., Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University,
1989
Career Highlights:
Dr. Ajayan has been a member of the Rensselaer
materials science and engineering department since 1997. He previously
spent two years at the Max-Planck-Institute for Metallforschung
in Stuttgart. He left there in 1997 to join the Universite of Paris-Orsay
for two years, then spent three years in Tsukuba, Japan as a post-doctoral
researcher for the company's fundamental research laboratory. Ajayan
is an editorial board member for the following publications: Advanced
Materials, Zeitschrift fur Metallkunde, TIP Revista Especialzada
en Ciencias Quimco-Biologicas and Journal of Science and
Nanotechnology. He won the National Science Foundation CAREER
Award in 1998, the Burton Award from the Microscopy Society of America
in 1997, and the Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship in 1995.
Ajayan also was awarded the Presidential Student Award from the
Electron Microscopy Society of America in 1989; the Hadfield Medal
for Outstanding Metallurgist in Calcutta, India in 1985; and the
Bachelor of Technology Gold Medal from Banaras Hindu University
in 1985.
Research Areas:
Professor Ajayan's research interests are
mainly focused on the synthesis of nanostructures, the study of
their structure and properties in relation to size and confinement.
He is one of the pioneers in the field of carbon nanotubes and has
demonstrated several possibilities for using these quasi-one-dimensional
structures as templates and molds for fabricating nanowires, composites,
and novel ceramic fibers. Major goals of his research include producing
macro-assemblies made of nanostructures for applications, understanding
growth mechanisms of nanostructures and designing new structures
and multifunctional nanocomposites. Other research interests are
phase stability in metal clusters, the graphite-diamond phase transition,
and growth of nanostructures under electron irradiation. He has
expertise in different electron microscopy techniques.
Selected Publications:
A. Cao, V. P. Veedu, X. Li, Z. Yao, M. N. Ghasemi-Nejhad and P. M. Ajayan, “Multifunctional brushes made from carbon nanotubes“, Nature Materials, 4, 540 (2005).
G. W. Meng, Y. J. Jung, A. Cao, R. Vajtai and P. M. Ajayan, “Controlled fabrication of hierarchically branched nanopores, nanotubes and nanowires“, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 102, 7074 (2005).
J. Suhr, N. Koratkar, P. Keblinski and P. M. Ajayan, “Viscoelasticity in carbon nanotube composites“, Nature Materials, 4, 134 (2005).
P. M. Ajayan, "How does a nanofiber grow?“, Nature (News and Views Section), 427, 402 (2004).
P. M. Ajayan and F. Banhart, "Strong bundles“, Nature Materials, (News and Views Section), 3, 135 (2004).
M. Yoon, S. Han, G. Kim, S. B. Lee, S. Berber, E. Osawa, J. Ihm, M. Terrones, F. Banhart, J. C. Charlier, N. Grobert, H. Terrones, P. M. Ajayan, and D. Tomanek, "Zipper Mechanism of Nanotube Fusion: Theory and Experiment”, Phys. Rev. Lett., 92, 75504 (2004).
N. Chakrapani, B. Q. Wei, A. Carillo, P. M. Ajayan and R. Kane, "Capillarity driven assembly of two-dimensional cellular carbon nanotube foams“, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101, 4009 (2004).
A. Srivastava, O. N. Srivastava, S. Talapatra, R. Vajtai and P. M. Ajayan, “Carbon nanotube filters“, Nature Materials, 3, 610 (2004).
Y. J. Jung, Y. Homma, R. Vajtai, Y. Kobayashi, T. Ogino and P. M. Ajayan, “Straightening suspended single walled carbon nanotubes by ion irradiation“, Nanoletters, 4, 1109 (2004).
G. Viswanathan, N. Chakrapani, H. Yang, B. Q. Wei, H. Chung, K. Cho, C. Y. Ryu, P. M. Ajayan, "Single-Step in Situ Synthesis of Polymer-Grafted Single-Wall Nanotube Composites" J. Am. Chem. Soc., 125, 9258 (2003).
Y. J. Jung, B. Wei, R. Vajtai, and P. M. Ajayan, "Mechanism of Selective Growth of Carbon Nanotubes on SiO2/Si Patterns", Nano Letters, 3, 561 (2003).
Contact Information:
P.M. Ajayan
112 Materials Research Center
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 Eighth Street
Troy, N.Y. 12180 USA
(518) 276-2322
E-mail: ajayan@rpi.edu
Top of Page
|
