Giacinto Scoles of Princeton, N.J., will be honored April 9 by the world’s largest scientific society for his achievements with laser-like beams of molecules to study and improve thin films, such as those being developed for the next generation of electronic devices, and other kinds of substances. He will receive the 2002 Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry from the American Chemical Society at its national meeting in Orlando, Fla.
“What my group and I have done is invent new methods for making beams of molecules that collide with each other in a controlled way as opposed to a random way,” said Scoles, a physical chemist at Princeton University. The approach allows study of chemical reactions in unprecedented detail.
Molecular beams can also help make better semiconductors, the organic versions that will produce many high-tech devices in coming years for their low cost, flexibility and speed. Electrons flow across a semiconductor shaped in the form of a thin film, and it is this component that Scoles and his team have learned how to improve.
“Instead of laying down the thin film from a vapor, we’re smashing the molecules on the [semiconductor] surface,” he said. Even when the surface is cold, the molecules have enough energy to diffuse — but not too much. “It’s like smoothing a wrinkled carpet by patting on it,” he said, and thus electrons flow more efficiently.
A native of northern Italy, Scoles said he has always been intrigued by new ideas — and sometimes dangerous ones, like taking apart ordnance he and his boyhood friends found in the Italian countryside in the years following World War II.
What brought him specifically to science, however, was a philosophy and history teacher: “He was very, very keen to explain, to encourage us to look at not just events but the reasons behind the events,” said Scoles. “In science I’ve found more people like him.”
Scoles, who is a member of the ACS physical chemistry and surface divisions, received his master’s degree from the University of Genoa in 1959 and performed his post-doctoral work at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
The ACS Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry is sponsored by E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co.