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Nan
Yao

Professor of the Practice in the Princeton Materials Institute; Director, Imaging and Analysis Center; Senior Research Scholar at the Princeton Materials Institute.

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Research interests: Utilizing advanced imaging, diffraction, spectroscopy and in-situ techniques, in tandem with theoretical simulations, to study fundamentals of the structure-composition-processing-property-performance relations in complex materials such as nanostructured materials, biomaterials, organic/inorganic interfaces, block copolymers, catalysts, quasicrystals and functional nanomaterials.

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Portrait of Nan Yao

Yao named fellow of the Materials Research Society

Graphic with text "Commendation for Outstanding Teaching".

Faculty commended for outstanding teaching

Woman handles strings to extract lithium salts.
Meiqi Yang, a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering and one of the study’s lead authors, operates the string-based approach for lithium extraction. Photo by Bumper DeJesus

Better lithium production on a string

Iron's electron orbits are thicker and dimmer than cobalt's, allowing identification of each element
Electron orbits shown in an image made with an atomic force microscope at the Princeton Materials Institute. Images by Princeton University

Like facial recognition for atoms, image distinguishes elements by electron orbitals

Microscope images of iron phthalocyanine molecules before and after removal of carbon monoxide
Researchers measured the mechanical forces applied to break a bond between carbon monoxide and iron phthalocyanine, which appears as a symmetrical cross in scanning probe microscope images taken before and after the bond rupture.

Researchers measure the breakup of a single chemical bond

Portrait of researcher

Yao, director of Imaging and Analysis Center, named AAAS fellow

Affiliations

Researchers, dressed in white suits, work in "clean room" lab under yellow light.

Princeton Materials Institute

Multidisciplinary research driving advances in materials science and photonics