Patrick Salg, Kathleen McCreary, and Kouta Kondou Named as the Winners of the 2019 APL Materials Excellence in Research Award

Recognition Highlights Outstanding Work by Early Career Researchers in AIP Publishing's High-Impact Journal in Materials Science

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AIP Publishing

Nov 05, 2019, 11:00 ET

MELVILLE, N.Y., Nov. 5, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- AIP Publishing is pleased to announce the winners of the APL Materials Excellence in Research Award for 2019, which will be presented at the Fall 2019 Materials Research Society meeting in Boston in December.

Patrick Salg, a Ph.D. candidate in Materials Science at Technische Universität in Darmstadt, Germany, won first place for his work on Atomically interface engineered micrometer-thick SrMoO₃ oxide electrodes for thin-film BaₓSr_1-xTiO₃ ferroelectric varactors tunable at low voltages.
Kathleen (Kathy) McCreary, Ph.D., a research physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. placed second for her work on A- and B-exciton photoluminescence intensity ratio as a measure of sample quality for transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers.
Kouta Kondou, D. Sci., a research scientist in the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS) in Saitama, Japan, received third place for Efficient spin current generation and suppression of magnetic damping due to fast spin ejection from nonmagnetic metal/indium-tin-oxide interfaces.

"Now in its fourth year, the APL Materials Excellence in Research Award was created to help outstanding young researchers extend the impact of their work," said Jason Wilde, chief publishing officer of AIP Publishing. He explained that an external committee selected the winners by judging the scientific content of all contributed papers accepted by APL Materials between August 16, 2018 and June 30, 2019. They chose the three top papers in which the first author was 40 years of age or younger.

"We are excited to honor Patrick Salg, Kathy McCreary, and Kouta Kondou by highlighting their exceptional papers on APL Materials' website," said editor-in-chief Judith MacManus-Driscoll, who is a Professor of Materials Science in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge (UK). She noted that the winners also receive networking and career advice from the journal's editors (first prize), monetary awards (first and second prizes), and waived article processing charges for an article published in APL Materials.

Salg's research focuses on a promising key component for emerging 5G technology -- material properties, interfaces and device fabrication of ferroelectric all-oxide varactors grown by pulsed laser deposition. The substitution of the metal bottom electrode with a highly conducting perovskite oxide enables an epitaxial thin film growth up to several micrometers, surpassing state-of-the-art performance of conventional varactors.

McCreary's research focuses on the synthesis and characterization of two-dimensional materials. She uses a variety of optical and transport techniques to investigate spintronic, valleytronic, and novel magnetic properties in atomically thin materials.

Kondou's research focus is on the study of efficient magnetic state control and energy conversion by using materials interfaces. The spintronic interfaces featured in his work have applications in more effective control and increased energy efficiency of advanced spintronic devices.

ABOUT APL MATERIALS

APL Materials is a peer-reviewed open-access journal published by AIP Publishing. It covers significant topical issues within the field of materials science, including bioinspired materials, magnetic materials, photovoltaics, tissue engineering, and various other fields at the forefront of materials science. The journal features original, experimental research with an emphasis on the quality and timeliness of the work. In addition to regular articles, the journal also publishes Special Topics, which report in depth on cutting-edge areas in materials science. The journal earned a Five-Year Impact Factor of 4.951 and an Impact Factor of 4.296 in the 2018 Journal Citation Reports® (Clarivate Analytics, 2019).

ABOUT AIP PUBLISHING

AIP Publishing is a wholly owned not-for-profit subsidiary of the American Institute of Physics (AIP). AIP Publishing's mission is to support the charitable, scientific and educational purposes of AIP through scholarly publishing activities in the fields of the physical and related sciences on its own behalf and on behalf of our publishing partners to help them proactively advance their missions.

SOURCE AIP Publishing