Why do you think your
work is highly cited?
I was blessed to have been involved in the early development of a
simple, elegant, and timely advance in the growth of carbon
nanotubes with my esteemed colleagues at Stanford University and
NASA Ames Research Center. Carbon nanotubes are one of the beloved
materials in nanotechnology, and due to the explosion of
investigations across the globe, the growth technique has been
widely adopted.
What are the
circumstances which led you to your work?
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“Along with this elegant growth methodology came the development of catalyst formulations that enabled the production of these materials at a larger scale, which opened up more application studies.”
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There was a need for simple approaches to grow carbon nanotubes
in a controllable fashion so that fundamental studies and device
fabrication could be greatly facilitated. Along with this elegant
growth methodology came the development of catalyst formulations
that enabled the production of these materials at a larger scale,
which opened up more application studies.
How would you describe
the significance of this work for your field?
The beauty of the growth approach is its simplicity to adopt.
More specifically it enabled researchers from different disciplines
who previously had no access to carbon nanotubes the chance to
produce and study this phenomenal class of materials. This in turn
has led to many advances in understanding and applying these
materials in future electronic and sensing devices.
Where do you see this
research going 10 years from now?
The use of carbon nanotubes for many applications has been
demonstrated in the laboratory, but few of the promising
applications have matured into useful technologies. I believe we
will see continued innovations in scalable growth technologies as
well as fabrication methods for integrating the structures in
complex nanodevice fabrication processes. I believe the development
of applications which make use of the phenomenal properties of these
materials is still in its infancy, and we shall see many advances in
fields as diverse as lightweight composites to implantable sensing
devices.
What lessons would you
draw from your work to share with the next generation of researchers?
The development of enabling methods and tools for producing new
materials rapidly expands the number of researchers who can study
and develop uses for the materials. As is often true, the simplest
method turns out to be very elegant and highly impactful.
Alan
M. Cassell, Ph.D.
Center for Nanotechnology
University
of
California
, Santa Cruz UARC
NASA
Ames
Research
Center
Moffitt
Field
,
CA
,
USA
cites
:
ccording
to a recent analysis of the 
