PNNL

Congratulations to Dr. Yingge Du at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on being selected to receive a 2016 Early Career Research Program research grant. He is among 49 recipients nationwide - including 22 at national laboratories - to receive the annual award, and was selected from approximately 600 applicants.

The Early Career Research Program, now in its seventh year, is managed by DOE's Office of Science and awards research grants to young scientists and engineers at U.S. universities and national laboratories. The grants are designed to bolster the nation's scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early years of their careers.

"We invest in promising young researchers early in their careers to support lifelong discovery science to fuel the nation's innovation system," said Dr. Cherry Murray, director of DOE's Office of Science. "We are proud of the accomplishments these young scientists already have made, and look forward to following their achievements in years to come."

Du is studying the fundamental properties of some of the most carefully constructed materials ever created - very thin films of materials known as transition metal oxides, which are built just one atomic layer at a time. Scientists are exploring the materials and their properties that can give rise to a range of applications, including energy capture, storage, and conversion, as well as atomically precise devices where the position of every atom is crucial. The materials are more environmentally friendly and easier to work with than many current electronic materials. But first, scientists must work out some of the basic properties of the sophisticated materials; when a device is built literally a few atoms at a time, a single atom can affect the device's physical properties in unexpected ways. PNNL scientists have been at the forefront of learning about some of the unexpected challenges, and Du and colleagues are exploring ways to exploit some of the findings to harness these materials more completely than is possible today. Du will receive $2.5 million toward his research over the next five years.

This year's awards bring to 13 the number won by PNNL staff since the program's inception in 2010. More information on the program can be found at DOE's Early Career Research Program website.

This article is from the press release on PNNL's early career research award winners, available at http://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4274.