In Praise of Nanotubes

ICTP today honoured the 2011 recipient of its ICTP Prize at a ceremony held in Trieste.

Ado Jorio, a physicist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, was awarded the Prize in April for his Raman spectroscopy work on single carbon nanotubes, clarifying their electronic and vibrational properties.

Carbon nanotubes, which were discovered in 1991, are extremely thin, hollow cylinders whose diameter is about 100,000 times smaller than a human hair. They are extremely strong materials, very good thermal conductors, and can behave as metals or semiconductors, properties that make them an important ingredient in the manufacturing of electronic devices and light-weight materials.

Raman spectroscopy is a technique that measures the frequency of both incident light (light striking a surface) and emitted light as it interacts with a given substance.  These measurements can tell a lot about the substance, such as its mechanical, elastic, thermal and electronic properties, thus making the technique a key in discovering new applications for carbon nanotubes.

"Words cannot express how honoured I am to receive this prize," said Jorio upon receiving the award.

The United States Ambassador to UNESCO, David Killion, presented the award to Jorio, which included a certificate, a sculpture and a cash prize of €3,000.

Jorio's main research interest is in the physics of nano-materials. He is an associate professor in the Department of Physics at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, having earned his PhD at the same university in 1999. He worked for two years as a post-doctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA.

ICTP's Scientific Council created the Prize in 1982. It recognizes young scientists (under 40) from developing countries who work and live in those countries and who have made outstanding and original contributions in physics or mathematics. To view the full citation of Jorio's award, as well as a list of past winners, see the ICTP Prize webpage.

Each year, the ICTP Prize is given in honour of a scientist who has made outstanding contributions to the field in which the Prize is given. The 2011 ICTP Prize honours Praveen Chaudhari (1937 - 2010), chairman of ICTP's Scientific Council from 1998 to 2002. Chaudhari made fundamental contributions to condensed matter physics and material science. He worked on the structure and properties of amorphous solids, mechanical properties of thin films, defects in solids, quantum transport in disordered systems, superconductivity, liquid crystal alignment on substrates, and on the magnetic monopole experiment. One of his main achievements is the discovery and development of amorphous magnetic materials, which are the basis of erasable, read-write, optical storage technology.