Research Summary

Dr. Yakobson is the Karl F. Hasselmann Chair in Engineering. Dr. Yakobson holds a joint appointment between the Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering and the Department of Chemistry. In 2008, Yakobson received a Nano 50 Award from the science magazine, Nanotech Briefs, for his innovation in nanotechnology, and in 2009, the Department of Energy R&D Award. He received his Ph.D. in 1982 from the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Yakobson is an editorial board member of the Journal of Nanoparticle Research and a member of the American Physical Society and the Electrochemical Society.

Karl F. Hasselmann was a pioneer in offshore oil and gas exploration and a philanthropist. Hasselmann was a close friends with Malcolm Lovett Sr., Chairman of the Rice Board of Trustees from 1967-1972.

Research Areas

Dr. Yakobson's research interests are in theory and modeling of structure, kinetics, and properties of materials derived from macroscopic and fundamental molecular interactions. He has done ground-breaking work on the physical properties of nanotubes, in particular their electro-mechanics, and recently with graphene and graphane.

Publications

1. B. I. Yakobson, and K. V. Bets, “Single-chirality nanotube synthesis by guided evolutionary selection”, Sci. Adv. 8, eadd462 (2022)
2. Y. Huang, T. Altalhi, B. I. Yakobson, and E. S. Penev, “Nucleobase-Bonded Graphene Nanoribbon Junctions: Electron Transport from First Principles”, ACS Nano 16, 16736–16743 (2022)
3. B. Deng, P. A. Advincula, D. X. Luong, J. Zhou, B. Zhang, Z. Wang, E. A McHugh, J. Chen, R. A. Carter, C. Kittrell, J. Lou, Y. Zhao, B. I. Yakobson, Y. Zhao, and J. M. Tour, “High-surface-area corundum nanoparticles by resistive hotspot-induced phase transformation”, Nat. Commun. 13, 5027 (2022)
4. S. Gupta, H. Yu, and B. I. Yakobson, “Designing 1D correlated-electron states by non-Euclidean topography of 2D monolayers”, Nat. Commun. 13, 3103 (2022)
5. J. Lei, Y. Xie, A. Kutana, K. V. Bets, and B. I. Yakobson, “Salt-Assisted MoS₂ Growth: Molecular Mechanisms from the First Principles”, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 144, 7497–7503 (2022)
6. H. Yu, A. Kutana, and B. I. Yakobson, “Electron Optics and Valley Hall Effect of Undulated Graphene”, Nano Lett. 22 (2022) DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c00103
7. C. Zhang, Z. Wang, J. Lei, L. Ma, B. I. Yakobson, and J. M. Tour, “Atomic Molybdenum for Synthesis of Ammonia with 50% Faradic Efficiency”, Small 18, 2106327 (2022)
8. X. Liu, M. Rahn, Q. Ruan, B. I. Yakobson, and M. C Hersam, “Probing borophene oxidation at the atomic scale”, Nanotechnology (2022) DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/ac56bd
9. Iu. A. Melchakova, T. G. Tenev, N. V. Vitanov, O. N. Tchaikovskay, L. A. Chernozatonskii, B. I. Yakobson, and P. V. Avramov, “Extreme structure and spontaneous lift of spin degeneracy in doped perforated bilayer graphenes”, Carbon 192, 61–70 (2022)
10. N. Gupta, E. S. Penev, and B. I. Yakobson, “Polycrystalline morphology and mechanical strength of nanotube fibers”, NPJ Comput. Mater. 8, 15 (2022)
11. Y. Xu, P. Zhang, X. Xuan, M. Xue, Z. Zhang, W. Guo, and B. I. Yakobson, “Borophane Polymorphs”, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 13, 1107–1113 (2022)
12. Q.-K. Li, A. Kutana, E. S. Penev, and B. I. Yakobson, “Iron corrosion in the “inert” supercritical CO₂, ab initio dynamics insights: How impurities matter”, Matter 5, 751–762 (2022)
13. A. Kutana, T. Altalhi, Q. Ruan, J.-J. Zhang, E. S. Penev, and B. I. Yakobson, “Stability and electronic properties of gallenene”, Nanoscale Adv. (2022) DOI: 10.1039/D1NA00553G
14. X. Liu, Q. Li, Q. Ruan, M. S. Rahn, B. I. Yakobson, and M. C. Hersam, “Borophene synthesis beyond the single-atomic-layer limit”, Nat. Mater. 21, 35–40 (2022)
15. B. Deng, Z. Wang, W. Chen, J. T. Li, D. X. Luong, R. A. Carter, G. Gao, B. I. Yakobson, Y. Zhao, and J. M. Tour, “Phase controlled synthesis of transition metal carbide nanocrystals by ultrafast flash Joule heating”, Nat. Commun. 13, 262 (2022)