Stanislaus S. Wong, a scientist with a joint appointment at the U.S.
Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University,
has won the Buck-Whitney Award from the American Chemical Society (ACS) Eastern
New York Section. The award recognizes excellent original contributions to pure
and applied chemistry. Wong will receive the award at the ACS Eastern New York
Section meeting in Albany on November 19.
Stanislaus S. Wong
“I enjoy exploring the chemistry of nanostructures – structures
with dimensions measuring mere billionths of a meter – as these hold promise
for numerous future applications, and I am gratified that my research has been
recognized by my peers,” Wong said.
Wong studies carbon nanotubes as well as metal oxide nanostructures in order
to gain a basic understanding of their synthesis and properties. In addition,
he modifies the nanotubes using chemical strategies to make them suitable for
various applications. Carbon nanotubes have a hollow cylindrical structure that
is just a few nanometers thick, or about 1/50,000 the thickness of a human hair,
and have potential applications in electronics, optics, and materials science.
Nanotubes possess intrinsic advantages including high surface areas, structural
flexibility, and high mechanical strength. In fact, they might be stiffer and
stronger than potentially any other known material, which is key for the design
of high-performance composite materials. Moreover, their structure – for
example, the way in which these tubes are rolled up – determines whether
they are semiconducting or metallic. It is not surprising, therefore, that nanotubes
are thought to have a host of wide-ranging, potential applications, including
their use as catalyst supports, field emitters for flat panel displays, high
strength engineering fibers in bulletproof clothing, sensors, gas storage media,
and as molecular wires for the next generation of electronics devices such as
transistors.
Wong also creates metal oxide and fluoride nanostructures of predictable size,
chemical composition, and shape using benign, green techniques. Specifically,
he has generated pure spherical particles, cubes, arrays, aggregates, and three-dimensional
assemblies, as well as one-dimensional tubes and wires in order to understand
how their characteristics change with these controlled modifications in structure.
Metal oxides, in particular, represent one of the most diverse classes of materials,
with important structure-related properties, including superconductivity, ferroelectricity,
magnetism, conductivity, and gas-sensing capabilities. Applications include
catalysts, chemical and optical sensors, fillers, coatings, energy storage media,
fuel cells, power generation, and solar cells as well as environmental remediation
and sensing. In his research over the years, Wong has worked closely with innumerable
colleagues at Brookhaven Lab and has used two of the Laboratory’s world-class
facilities: the Center for Functional Nanomaterials and the National Synchrotron
Light Source.
Stanislaus S. Wong earned a B.Sc. in chemistry from McGill University in 1994
and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University in 1999. He was a postdoctoral
fellow at Columbia University before simultaneously joining Stony Brook University
in 2000 as an Assistant Professor in the Chemistry Department and Brookhaven
Lab as a scientific staff member in the Materials Sciences Division. In 2006,
he was promoted to Associate Professor, the position he still maintains. Currently,
he works in Brookhaven’s Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science
Department.
Wong has been honored with numerous awards, including the 3M Nontenured Faculty
Award, the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award, and an Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship.