Eklund Receives Japan Carbon Award for Lifetime Achievement
Peter Eklund, Distinguished Professor of Physics and of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State, has been awarded the Japan Carbon Award for Lifetime Achievement. The award was presented to Eklund for his "lifelong great contributions in the field of carbon materials science and technology." A ceremony to recognize Eklund's receipt of the award was conducted recently at the 2008 International Conference on Carbon in Nagano, Japan.
Eklund has an international reputation for research achievements in carbon materials, materials synthesis, and structure-property relationships in solids. He has specialized in the electrical and optical properties of materials and in developing models at the atomic scale to explain the data obtained in research experiments. He has been recognized internationally for the discovery of the photopolymerization of fullerenes -- the bonding of two or more of these small molecules under the influence of light -- a discovery that later was confirmed by nuclear-magnetic-resonance (NMR). His group also was the first to demonstrate the utility of vibrational spectroscopy in characterizing the fundamental properties of several classes of carbon materials, including fullerenes and carbon nanotubes.
Using the results of optical, spectroscopic, and electrical-transport measurements, Eklund builds microscopic models of the structure of new materials to explain their physical properties. He also is working to develop materials that can be used for thermoelectric refrigeration and solar photovoltaic cells based on nanowires.
Among Eklund's research interests are the development of growth models for carbon nanotubes and crystalline nanowires, as well as their synthesis, and the physical and chemical properties of these quantum filaments. He also is investigating the use of carbon nanotubes and graphene as thermoelectric chemical sensors, as well as the confinement of photons in nanotubes and small-diameter semiconducting nanowires. Eklund's group was among the first to report that carbon nanotubes can store hydrogen in significant amounts only at very low temperatures.
Eklund is a fellow of the American Physical Society and was named the George D. Graffin Lecturer in Carbon Science and Engineering by the American Carbon Society in 2007 for his distinguished contributions to carbon science and engineering. Eklund is a member of the Materials Research Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Carbon Society. In 2005, he was named to the Solid State Sciences Committee of the N ational Academy of Sciences.
Eklund has held visiting professorships at several universities in Japan, and was a visiting scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1985 and 1986. In 1997, he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in recognition of his contributions related to the synthesis and optical properties of various solid-state forms of carbon. He has coauthored two books, has contributed chapters to 19 books, and has published more than 300 scientific papers. He holds three U.S. patents as a result of his materials research and has five additional patents pending.
Eklund participated in the early development of three small research-and-development businesses. He and his colleagues at PhotoStealth Inc. developed computer-generated camouflage patterns that could be printed on textiles. At ICMR Inc., now known as NeoPhotonics Inc., the research was focused on laser-driven synthesis of nanoparticles and coatings. At CarboLex Inc., where he currently is president and CEO, he works on large-scale production of bundles of single-walled carbon nanotubes.
Eklund came to Penn State as a professor of physics in 1999. He previously had been an assistant professor, associate professor, and professor at the University of Kentucky from 1977 to 1999, where he also was associate director of the Center for Applied Energy Research from 1991 to 1998. In 1998 the university awarded him with the annual University Research Professorship for outstanding research and service. Eklund was a postdoctoral research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1975 to 1977, and was an associate engineer at the Lockheed Missile and Space Company from 1968 to 1969. He received his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967 and his doctoral degree in solid-state physics from Purdue University in 1974.