Paul McEuen, professor of physics at Cornell University, is one of four scientists named to share this year's leading European condensed-matter physics award, the Agilent Technologies Europhysics Prize. The four are being recognized for their research into carbon nanotubes, a novel form of carbon, and their efforts to exploit the new technology for a broad range of electronic applications.

The four winners, who will share a cash prize of 51,000 Swiss francs, or about $30,000, are McEuen, Sumio Iijima of Meijo University (Japan), Cees Dekker of Delft University (Holland) and Thomas Ebbesen of NEC Research Institute, Princeton, N.J. The prize is administered by the European Physical Society. The awards will be presented at a ceremony in Brighton, England, April 11, 2002.

Iijima and his colleagues discovered in 1991 that sheets of graphite can be rolled into seamless tubes just nanometers in diameter. Ebbesen and his team then devised a method for producing large numbers of the tubes and found that they have a surprising degree of elasticity that makes them very strong. Groups led by Dekker and McEuen, who at the time was at the University of California-Berkeley, subsequently discovered the unusual electrical properties of carbon nanotubes, including their ability to behave as quantum wires -- that is, one-dimensional conductors.

Carbon nanotubes are composed of carbon atoms interlinked in a hexagonal pattern. Each carbon atom is bonded to its neighbors by three valence electrons, leaving one electron free to roam. (A valence electron takes part in forming chemical bonds.) This is what allows nanotubes to conduct electricity. A typical nanotube is a few nanometers in diameter and several microns long. (A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, about three times the diameter of a silicon atom. A micron is one-millionth of a meter, or about one-Þftieth the diameter of a human hair.) Many devices based on nanotubes have emerged in the past few years. In 1997, McEuen's and Dekker's research groups were the first to study electron transport in single-wall tubes, including making single-electron transistors. Dekker and co-workers created a single-molecule transistor made from one tube. Since then, many advances in carbon nanotube science and technology have been unveiled, representing significant steps into the world of nano-electronics.

At Cornell, McEuen's group is concentrating on the basic physics of nanotubes and using them to study the physics of electrons, as well as to probe other nanometer-scale systems. Recently McEuen and his Cornell researchers found new ways to cut and bend the tiny tubes using an atomic force microscope. They also have learned how to feel the force of a single electron as it hops on and off the tube. The research promises to advance both fundamental physics and the miniaturization of electronic circuits.

McEuen joined the Cornell faculty in January 2001 from UC-Berkeley, which he joined in 1992 as an assistant professor, later being named associate professor. He has been a principal investigator at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 1992. He earned his Ph.D. in applied physics from Yale University in 1990 and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1990 to 1991.

The Agilent prize, formerly known as the Hewlett Packard Europhysics Prize, was created in 1975 in recognition of recent work by one or more individuals in the area of physics of condensed matter, specifically work leading to advances in the fields of electronic, electrical and materials engineering.