Ralph Nuzzo

His work has led to new techniques for fabricating and manipulating materials at the nano scale level, including functional device structures for microelectronics, optics and chemical sensing.

Nuzzo was a pioneer in the development of methods of self-assembled monolayers[1] that have led to entirely new areas of surface chemistry with important extensions into physics, biology and materials, and with numerous applications ranging from bio-sensors to advanced electronics.

His work has made important contributions to soft lithography – a low cost alternative to conventional photo-lithography for patterning circuits on microchips.

Nuzzo co-authored the paper on the "use of principles of physical organic chemistry to create functional surfaces based on self-assembled monolayers (SAMs)."

After completing his graduate studies, he accepted a position at Bell Laboratories, then a part of AT&T, where he held the title of distinguished member of the technical staff in materials research.