Dr. David Carroll Biography
Dr. David Carroll earned his bachelor of science degree (1985) in physics from NC State University (Raleigh) and his doctorate (1993) in physics from Wesleyan University under the supervision of Dr. Dale Doering.
Dr. Carroll's thesis work involved charged defects in complex oxide materials. As a postdoctoral associate for Professor Dawn Bonnell at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Carroll worked on the application of scanning probes to size and dimension related phenomena in oxide supported metal nanoclusters.
From there Dr. Carroll 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 Dr. Carroll 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 Dr. Carroll began the Laboratory for Nanotechnology at Clemson University 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, Dr. Carroll's group moved to Wake Forest University 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.
Professor Carroll's team continues to push the state-of-the-art in performance of organic solar cells, having set performance records twice in recent years, and his primary research interests include:
- Growth and assembly of novel nanostructures
- Optics of nanostructures
- Nano-photonics and Quantum-functional properties of nanophase blends