Charles M. Lieber facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Charles M. Lieber
Born	1959 (age 65–66) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Nationality	American
Education	Franklin & Marshall College Stanford University
Known for	Nanomaterials synthesis and assembly Nanostructure characterization Nanoelectronics and nanophotonics Nanobioelectronics
Awards	Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2012) MRS Von Hippel Award (2016)
Scientific career
Fields	Nanoscience and nanotechnology Chemistry Materials physics Neuroscience
Institutions	Harvard University Columbia University Wuhan University of Technology
Doctoral students	Hongjie Dai Xiangfeng Duan Philip Kim Peidong Yang Latha Venkataraman Yi Cui

Charles M. Lieber (born 1959) is an American chemist, inventor, and expert in nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is a field of science that deals with creating and using super tiny materials and devices, often smaller than a human hair!

In 2011, Thomson Reuters named Lieber the top chemist in the world for the years 2000–2010. This was because of how important his scientific papers were. He is famous for making, putting together, and studying materials and devices that are super small, at the nanoscale. He also uses tiny electronic devices in biology. Many top scientists in nanoscience learned from him.

Lieber is a professor at Harvard University. He has written over 400 articles for science journals. He has also helped edit and write many books about nanoscience. Until 2020, he led Harvard's chemistry department. He also worked in the engineering school. Lieber has invented many things and holds over fifty US patents. He helped start two nanotechnology companies, Nanosys in 2001 and Vista Therapeutics in 2007. In 2012, he won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry.

Since 2020, Lieber has been on leave from Harvard. This is due to health reasons and legal issues he has faced.

Early Life and Education

Charles M. Lieber was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1959. When he was a kid, he loved to build and take apart things like stereos, cars, and model airplanes.

He earned his first degree in chemistry from Franklin & Marshall College in 1981. Then, he got his Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford University. There, he studied how surfaces work. After that, he did more research at Caltech for two years. He looked at how electrons move over long distances in special proteins.

Early in his career, Lieber became very interested in making super tiny wires. He realized that if new technology was going to come from tiny materials, it would need these small wires. They would help move information and connect devices. Lieber was one of the first to think about using the special features of very small things. He wanted to combine light and electronics. He also wanted to connect tiny materials with living things. He believed this could lead to completely new technologies.

Lieber joined Columbia University in 1987 as a professor. In 1992, he moved to Harvard University. At Harvard, he works in both the chemistry and engineering departments. He became the head of Harvard's chemistry department in 2015.

Amazing Discoveries in Nanoscience

Lieber's work has greatly helped us understand and use tiny materials. He has shown how to build and use many different kinds of nanoscale materials. His ideas are key to the "bottom-up" way of making things in nanoscience. This means building things from very small parts. His work includes making tiny building blocks, studying them, and showing how they can be used. These uses range from electronics and computers to energy, biology, and medicine.

Building Blocks of the Tiny World

Lieber explained why we should make tiny wires, called nanowires. He showed how to control their makeup, size, and shape. He created a way to grow the first controlled, single-crystal semiconductor nanowires. This work made it possible to grow nanowires from almost any element. He also came up with the idea of growing nanowire superlattices. These are like tiny stacks of different nanowires. They have new properties for light and electronics. This idea is now a big part of making nanowire light and electronic devices.

Seeing the Smallest Details

Lieber found new ways to use scanning probe microscopes. These tools can measure the electrical and mechanical properties of single carbon nanotubes and nanowires. His work proved that we can make semiconductor nanowires with controlled electrical properties. This means these tiny wires can be used as building blocks for electronic devices. Lieber also invented chemical force microscopy. This tool helps study the chemical properties of material surfaces at a tiny scale.

Tiny Electronics and Light Devices

Lieber used special nanowires to show how electricity and light behave in tiny spaces. He created tiny lasers that use single nanowires. He also made nanotweezers from carbon nanotubes. Other devices include super-dense memory, tiny solar cells, and logic circuits. These circuits use assembled semiconductor nanowires. His ideas helped put nanowires on the Intel roadmap for future computer chips.

Putting Tiny Parts Together

Lieber created many ways to put together nanowires and nanotubes. He developed a method called fluidic-directed assembly. This allows for large-scale assembly of parallel and crossed nanowire arrays. Science magazine called this one of the "Breakthroughs of 2001." He also found a way to connect the large world to the tiny world without special tools. More recently, he introduced "nanocombing." This method helped create a programmable nanowire logic tile. It also led to the first stand-alone nanocomputer.

Nano-Tools for Health

Lieber showed how to directly detect proteins using tiny electronics. He also found ways to sense individual viruses. His work allowed for detecting cancer markers and tumor enzymes. More recently, he found a way to make these measurements work in the body. This helps overcome problems with sensing devices in body fluids. It opens the door for using these tiny devices in healthcare.

Lieber has also made tiny electronic devices to study cells and tissues. He showed that these devices can record electrical activity from heart cells very clearly. He also created 3D nanoscale transistors. These tiny transistors can detect single molecules, cell functions, and even light.

Exploring the Brain with Nanotech

Lieber's work on tiny electronic tools for cells is changing how we record and control brain activity. He has integrated arrays of nanowire transistors with brain cells. This allows mapping brain activity with high detail. He also made 3D sensor arrays that look like natural tissue. For the first time, he created artificial tissues that can connect with brain cells in 3D. This shows it's possible to make 3D electronic-neural networks.

Lieber's current work focuses on putting electronics into the brain in a gentle way. He has shown that these tiny electronics can be injected with a syringe. This allows placing devices in a specific part of the brain. Studies show that these injectable electronics cause very little harm. They also stay connected to brain circuits for up to a year. This idea of using nanotechnology to connect with the brain could help treat brain diseases. It could also help with strokes and injuries. Scientific American called injectable electronics one of the top ten world-changing ideas of 2015.

Awards and Recognition

Lieber has received many important awards for his work:

• Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology (2001)
• NBIC Research Excellence Award in Nanotechnology (2007)
• Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2012)
• IEEE Nanotechnology Pioneer Award (2013)
• Remsen Award (2016)
• Welch Award in Chemistry (2019)

Other Honors and Roles

Lieber is a member of many important science groups. These include the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. He is also an elected Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Materials Research Society and the American Chemical Society. He also belongs to the American Physical Society and IEEE.

He is a co-editor of the science journal Nano Letters. He also helps advise many other science and technology journals.

Giant Pumpkins!

Since 2007, Lieber has grown giant pumpkins in his yard in Massachusetts. In 2010, he won a contest with a 1,610-pound pumpkin! In 2012, his 1,770-pound pumpkin came in second. It also set a new record for Massachusetts. In 2014, his 1,870-pound pumpkin was the biggest in Massachusetts. It was the 17th largest in the world that year. In 2020, he grew an amazing 2,276-pound pumpkin. This pumpkin still holds the record for the largest ever grown in Massachusetts!

See also

• Molecular electronics
• Nanoparticle
• Self-assembly