Dr. David L. Carroll

David L. Carroll, Ph.D. is director of the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials and Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Wake Forest University.
 
Dave earned his BS (1985) in physics from NC State University (Raleigh) and his Ph.D. (1993) in physics from Wesleyan University in (Middletown, CT) under the supervision of Dr. Dale Doering. His thesis work involved charged defects in complex oxide materials.
 
As a postdoctoral associate for Professor Dawn Bonnell at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), he worked on the application of scanning probes to size and dimension related phenomena in oxide supported metal nanoclusters. From there he became a research associate at the Max-Planck-Insitut für Metallforschung in Stuttgart Germany under the direction of Professor Manfred Rühle. His primary research focus was nanoscale phenomena at metal-ceramic interfaces using a combination of microscopy techniques. It was at the MPI that he first began working on carbon nanotube systems and specifically was the first to identify the signature for one dimensional behavior in such systems as well as defect states for those systems.
 
In 1997 Dave began the Laboratory for Nanotechnology at Clemson University (SC) where he received early promotion and tenure in the department of physics. At Clemson he established a program in organic devices based upon carbon nanotube nanocomposites demonstrating enhanced lifetime and performance in OLEDs for the first time. In 2003, his group moved to Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem NC to establish the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials. This move allowed the research team to expand its work into the fields of biomedical nanotechnologies and to continue their work in nanocomposite organic devices such as photovoltaics. His team continues to push the state-of-the-art in performance of organic solar cells, having set performance records twice in recent years.
 
Today his primary research interests are: Growth and assembly of novel nanostructures, Optics of nanostructures and Nano-photonics, Quantum-functional properties of nanophase blends, Organic nanocomposite devices and technologies including organic photovoltaics, lighting systems, and IR sensors, Biomedical-nanotechnology including smart therapeutics, advanced/responsive tissue scaffolding technology, and biological-technology signal transduction.
 
Since becoming faculty, Dave has published over 150 articles in scholarly journals such as PRL, APL, Advanced Materials, and NanoLetters. He has published 1 text book on one dimensional metals, edited two books, written three book chapters, and holds 12 patents or patent filings. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences with more than 65 invited talks in the past few years. He is also a reviewer for 23 different journals, a regular panelist at NSF, SFI, DFG, AFOSR, ARO, and NASA, and is a frequent consultant to a number of industrial interests. He has been actively involved in two spinoff companies utilizing technologies from his labs. He continues to maintain strong ties to the Max-Planck-Insitut für Festkörperforschung in Stuttgart Germany, the Department of Physics at Trinity College in Dublin Ireland, and the Department of Materials Science at Rice University.
 
Dave lives in Winston-Salem with his family where he is active in the Moravian Church, volunteers at the local YMCA, and plays in a competition bagpipe band.