Rodney S. "Rod" Ruoff is an American
physical chemist and nanoscience
researcher. He is one of the world
experts on carbon materials including
carbon nanostructures such as
fullerenes, nanotubes, graphene,
diamond, and has had pioneering
discoveries on such materials and
others. Ruoff received his B.S. in
Chemistry from The University of Texas
at Austin and his Ph.D. in Chemical
Physics at the University of
Illinois-Urbana. After a Fulbright
Fellowship at the MPI fuer
Stroemungsforschung in Goettingen,
Germany and postdoctoral work at the IBM
T. J. Watson Research Center, Ruoff
became a staff scientist in the
Molecular Physics Laboratory at SRI
International.He is currently UNIST
Distinguished Professor at the Ulsan
National Institute of Science and
Technology, and the director of the
Center for Multidimensional Carbon
Materials, an Institute for Basic
Science Center located at UNIST.
Research 
Rod Ruoff and his research groups have
made seminal contributions to developing
new synthesis techniques and improving
our understanding of properties of novel
materials including nanostructures and
2D materials, especially novel carbon
materials. Some examples of pioneering
studies, among others, include:(i) of
the mechanics of C60, and of nanotubes,
including pullout of inner shell with
respect to outer shell of the nanotube,
and of a connection between mechanical
deformation and structure on the one
hand, and chemical reactivity on the
other;(ii) of solubility phenomena of
fullerenes, nanotubes, and
graphene;(iii) of carbon-encapsulated
metal nanoparticles;(iv) of patterned
graphite and thus micromechanically
exfoliated graphene-like flakes;(v) of
scaled growth of graphene on copper and
copper-nickel foils;(vi) of isotopically
labeled graphites and graphene;(vii) of
graphene oxide and reduced graphene
oxide and composites and paper-like
films composed of them;(viii) of the use
of chemically modified graphene and
graphite foam for electrode materials in
electrical energy storage;(ix) of
graphene as a support film for
biological TEM;(x) of graphene as a
protective coating against oxidation.
Ruoff provided some personal
perspectives on graphene and new carbon
materials ‘on the horizon’ in 2012. As a
graduate student at the University of
Illinois-Urbana, Ruoff and colleagues
published seminal papers on the
structure of weakly bound clusters
formed in supersonic jets, and of
relaxation processes in supersonic jets.
His predictions with A. L. Ruoff about
the mechanical response of fullerite
under high pressure, and his work with
colleagues on the unique solvation
phenomena of C60 in various solvent
systems, and of synthesis and structural
characterization of supergiant
fullerenes containing single crystal
metal ‘encapsulates’, have demonstrated
to the scientific community the novel
properties of closed-shell carbon
structures. He also co-developed a new
in-situ mechanical testing device for
measuring the tensile response of
bundles of SWCNTs and individual MWCNTs
inside of a scanning electron
microscope. This work has yielded
important insights into the mechanics
and tribology of these systems, and
suggested the possibility of very low
friction linear bearings. Similarly,
Ruoff and collaborators were the first
to use solubility parameters to
rationalize the solubility of
fullerenes, of single-walled nanotubes,
and of chemically modified graphenes.
Furthermore, Rod is credited with first
creating graphene by lithographic
patterning to make single crystal
graphite micropillars; he and his team
achieved thereby single crystal
multilayer graphene platelets.
More recently, Ruoff and collaborators
have demonstrated synthesis of large
area monolayer graphene on copper foil
by chemical vapor deposition, for which
relatively high carrier mobilities have
been obtained, and subsequently have
used isotopic labeling and micro-Raman
mapping to map grains and grain
boundaries in such atom thick layers and
to elucidate growth mechanisms, and
studied their performance as transparent
conductive electrodes. Ruoff and his
collaborators have also made a series of
advances in novel composite systems
comprising chemically modified graphene
platelets.
Ruoff and his team were the first to use
graphene as electrodes of
electrochemical capacitors, reporting on
graphene supercapacitors in 2008.
Recently, Ruoff and his group reported
on a new carbon, potentially having
regions of ‘negative curvature carbon’
with a remarkably high specific surface
area of 3100 m² g−1, and atom-thick
carbon sp2-bonded walls that define
pores varying in diameter from about 0.6
to 5 nm. They showed that this type of
porous carbon works very well as an
electrode material for double-layer
supercapacitors, a very exciting
advance.
Rod has a Hirsch factor of 101.
Positions 
UNIST Distinguished Professor of
Chemistry and Materials Science and
Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of
Science and Technology
Cockrell Family Regents Chair Professor,
Mechanical Engineering, The University
of Texas at Austin
Professor and John Evans Professor,
Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern
University
Associate Professor, Physics, Washington
University
Staff Scientist, Molecular Physics
Laboratory, SRI International
Postdoctoral researcher, IBM Thomas J.
Watson Research Center
Postdoctoral researcher/Fulbright
Fellow, Max Planck Institute fuer
Stroemungsforschung
Awards and fellowships 
Turnbull Award Materials Research
Society
Materials Research Society Fellow
American Association for the Advancement
of Science Fellow
American Physical Society Fellow
Distinguished Chair Visiting Professor,
Sungkyunkwan University Advanced
Institute of Science and Technology
Fulbright Fellow
External links 
"MRS F14 Turnbull Lecture given by Prof.
Ruoff". www.youtube.com. Retrieved
2015-02-17. 
"Center for Multidimensional Carbon
Materials". cmcm.ibs.re.kr. Retrieved
2015-02-13. 
"Prof. Rodney Ruoff". cmcm.ibs.re.kr.
Retrieved 2015-02-13. 
References 
