Chris Kiely, professor of materials science and engineering, was one of 14 researchers worldwide in 2005 to receive Nano 50 Awards from Nanotech Briefs.

The online journal recognized the “top 50 technologies, products and innovators that have significantly impacted…the state of the art in nanotechnology.” Kiely was one of 14 innovators named.

Kiely, who directs Lehigh’s Nano– characterization Laboratory, develops TEM techniques to study catalysts, nanoparticle self-assembly, nanowires, fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, metal-semiconductor contacts, metal-oxide interfaces and semiconductor heteroepitaxy.

In 2005-06, Kiely and colleagues from Cardiff University in the U.K. published articles in Nature and Science.

The group reported in Nature that the selective oxidation processes used to make compounds contained in chemical products could be accomplished more cleanly and efficiently with gold nanoparticle catalysts.

In Science, the group reported that they had used Lehigh’s VG HB 603 aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope to map the chemical structure of a nanoparticle that is the active component of a new, environmentally friendly catalyst.