Professor
Executive Vice President (Academic Affairs)
Email: steven.bernasek@yale-nus.edu.sg
Email: sberna@princeton.edu
Website: chemists.princeton.edu/bernasek/
Professor Steven Bernasek earned his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry at Kansas State University in 1971. His PhD in physical chemistry is from the University of California, Berkeley. After a brief postdoctoral appointment at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, he joined the faculty of Princeton University in July 1975, where he was Professor of Chemistry until joining the faculty of Yale-NUS College in July, 2015. During his career at Princeton he advised over 50 PhD students, about 30 senior thesis students, and 35 postdoctoral fellows in his laboratory.
Professor Bernasek is an experimental physical chemist, interested in the mechanisms and dynamics of chemical reactions which occur at solid surfaces and interfaces. His research interests include studies of the mechanisms of heterogeneous catalysis, the mechanism and prevention of corrosion of active metals, and the chemistry of processing of electronic device materials. His recent work has focused on the understanding of surface self-assembly processes and the surface chemistry necessary for the development of molecular electronic devices. He is also very interested in the role of surfaces in the process of molecular evolution, particularly the question of homochirality in biologically active molecules.
Professor Bernasek has published over 200 journal articles in journals such as Physical Review Letters, the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the Journal of Chemical Physics, the Journal of Physical Chemistry, Langmuir, and Surface Science. He has co-edited four books in the area of surface chemistry and materials science, and is the author of the monograph “Heterogeneous Reaction Dynamics”. Some recent publications are listed here:
Amber M. Hibberd, Rachel Thorman, Joshua N. Wnuk, and Steven L. Bernasek, “Rubidium
Deposition on Alkanethiolate Self-Assembled Monolayers on Gold”, J. App. Phys., 112,
023110 (2012).
Amber M. Hibberd, Susanna.Liljegren-Bergman, YuLin Zhong, and Steven L. Bernasek, “Potassium Spin Polarization Lifetime for a 30- Carbon Chain Siloxane Film”, J. Chem.
Phys., 137, 174703 (2012).
Steven L. Bernasek, “Can We Understand the Molecule in Molecular Electronics”, Angewandte Chemie, Int. Ed., 51, 9737 (2012), invited Highlight.
Steven L. Bernasek, “Van der Waals Rectifiers”, Nature Nanotechnology, 8, 80 (2013).
A.M. Hibberd, S.J. Seltzer, M.V. Balabas, M. Morse, D. Budker, and Steven L. Bernasek, “Light-Induced changes in an alkali metal atomic vapor cell coating studied by X-ray
photoelectron spectroscopy”, J. App. Phys., 114, 094513 (2013).
Esther Frederick, Pearl N. Dickerson, Yu Lin Zhong, and Steven L. Bernasek, “Substituent Effects on the Kinetics of Bifunctional Styrene SAM formation on H-terminated Si(111)”,
Langmuir, 30, 7687 (2014).
Zachary M. Detweiler, James White, Steven L. Bernasek, Andrew B. Bocarsly, “Anodized Indium Metal Electrodes for Enhanced Carbon Dioxide Reduction in Aqueous Electrolyte”,
Langmuir, 30, 7593 (2014).
Matthew G. Frith, Joshua D. Wnuk, Chang-Min Chun, Trikur A. Ramanarayanan, and Steven L. Bernasek, “The Kinetics and Mechanism of the Selective Oxidation of 20Fe–
40Ni–10Mn–30Cr Alloy”, Oxidation of Metals, 83, 71 (2015).
Xiao Shi, Ye-Fei Li, Steven L. Bernasek, and Annabella Selloni, “Structure of the NiFe2O4(001) surface in contact with gaseous O2 and water vapour”, Surface Science, in press (2015).
Steven A. Klankowski, Gaind P. Pandey, Gary Malek, Conor R. Thomas, Steven L. Bernasek, Judy Wu, and Jun Li, “Higher-Power Supercapacitor Electrodes Based on
Mesoporous Manganese Oxide Coating on Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanofibers”, Nanoscale, 7, 8485 (2015)
Integrated Science