Eligibility Requirements

To be eligible for this award the candidate must:

• Have a paper accepted for publication in APL Materials between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025.
• Be 40 years of age or younger and the first author on the paper.
• Submit a contributed paper to the journal. (Invited papers are not eligible.)

Selection Process

Awards will be given to the first author of each winning paper. The winning papers will be selected by an external committee and will be reviewed based on the scientific content. The winners will be notified of their award via email and the awards will be announced through a Press Release. Papers will be highlighted on the APL Materials webpage and included in AIP Publishing email communications to materials science researchers.

Prizes

• 1st place: $5,000 prize + waived article processing charge on one 2026 APL Materials publication.
• 2nd place: $2,500 prize + waived article processing charge on one 2026 APL Materials publication.
• 3rd place: Waived article processing charge on one 2026 APL Materials publication.

Contact

Email apm-journalmanager@aip.org for questions about eligibility, the selection process, or the award.

Winners

2024

1st Prize: Pengyan Luan for Hysteresis erasure in ZIF-8@ZnO nanorod array field-effect transistors through oxygen chemisorption-induced depolarization

2nd Prize: Peiyu Yan for Methacrylated gelatin hydrogel conjugated with ε-polylysine and enriched with platelet-rich plasma for chronically infected wounds

3rd Prize: Ryotaro Hayasaka for Common anion rule in oxide heterointerfaces: Experimental verification by in situ photoemission spectroscopy

Previous Winners

2023

1st Prize: Shubham Mondal for Reconfigurable Self-Powered Deep UV Photodetectors Based on Ultrawide Bandgap Ferroelectric ScAlN

2nd Prize: Nathaniel Schreiber and Ludi Miao for A Model Heterostructure with Engineered Berry Curvature

3rd Prize: Titiksha Srivastava for Resonant dynamics of three-dimensional skyrmionic textures in thin film multilayers

2022

1st Prize: Xuanyi Zhang for Thickness and Temperature Dependence of the Atomic-Scale Structure of SrRuO₃ Thin Films

2nd Prize: Jin Hong Lee for Strain tuning of Néel temperature in YCrO₃ epitaxial thin films 

3rd Prize: Berit Goodge for Disentangling types of lattice disorder impacting superconductivity in Sr₂RuO₄ by quantitative local probes 

2021

1st Prize: Matthew Barone for Improved control of atomic layering in perovskite-related homologous series

2nd Prize: Chao Zhou for Atomic imprinting in the absence of an intrinsic length scale

3rd Prize: Jan Rieck for Trade-off between variability and retention of memristive epitaxial SrTiO₃ devices

2020

1st Prize: Zhong-Li Liu for Material informatics for layered high-T_C superconductors

2nd Prize: Jisung Park for Fully transparent field-effect transistor with high drain current and on-off ratio

3rd Prize: Dongxue Du for High electrical conductivity in the epitaxial polar metals LaAuGe and LaPtSb 

2019

1st Prize: Patrick Salg for Atomically interface engineered micrometer-thick SrMoO₃ oxide electrodes for thin-film BaₓSr₁₋ₓTiO₃ ferroelectric varactors tunable at low voltages

2nd Prize: Kathleen McCreary for A- and B-exciton photoluminescence intensity ratio as a measure of sample quality for transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers

3rd Prize: Kouta Kondou for Efficient spin current generation and suppression of magnetic damping due to fast spin ejection from nonmagnetic metal/indium-tin-oxide interfaces

2018

1st Prize: Sita Dugu for A graphene integrated highly transparant resistive switching memory device

2nd Prize: Yusin Pak for Scalable integration of periodically aligned 2D-MoS₂ nanoribbon array

3rd Prize: Han Gyeol Lee for Anisotropic suppression of octahedral breathing distortion with the fully strained BaBiO₃/BaCeO₃ heterointerface

2017

1st Prize: Gi-Yeop Kim for Disordered ferroelectricity in the PbTiO₃/SrTiO₃ superlattice thin film

2nd Prize: Giulio Benetti for Direct synthesis of antimicrobial coatings based on tailored bi-elemental nanoparticles

3rd Prize: Patrick Marshall for Growth of strontium ruthenate films by hybrid molecular beam epitaxy

2016

1st Prize: Yaohua Liu for Induced Ti magnetization at La_0.7Sr_0.3Mno₃ and BaTiO₃ interfaces

2nd Prize: Kevin Stone for Influence of amorphous structure on polymorphism in vanadia

3rd Prize: Yasuaki Arakawa for High hole mobility p-type GaN with low residual hydrogen concentration prepared by pulsed sputtering