André Taylor (scientist)

Taylor attended Smith-Cotton High School in Missouri.[1] As a high school student he spent a year as an exchange student in Spain. He played basketball and soccer, was a National Merit Scholar and member of the National Honor Society.[1] He graduated in 1991 and moved to the Missouri University of Science and Technology to study chemical engineering. Taylor was a graduate student at Georgia Tech before joining the University of Michigan to complete his doctoral research.[1] Throughout his studies Taylor held various positions in chemistry industries, including working for DuPont and General Motors.[1] Taylor was a member of the Boy Scouts of America, and achieved the status of Eagle Scout. He has said that this experience emphasized the important of preserving planet Earth.[2]

Taylor led the Transformative Materials and Devices research laboratory at Yale University where he developed new materials for energy conversion.[3] There he focussed on carbon-based solar cells that made used of small molecule and polymer semiconductors.[4]

Taylor joined the New York University Tandon School of Engineering in 2018, where continued to develop materials and devices for energy conversion, with a particular focus on perovskite solar cells.[2] The perovskite solar cells incorporate a P-I-N sandwich-like structure, where the P and N layers transport holes and electrons, respectively. The I layers are the intrinsic layers that are responsible for generating electron-hole pairs when exposed to light. Perovskites make appropriate materials because they absorb light across a broad spectral range.[4] Taylor worked on the phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) electron transport layer, developing simple ways to fabricate uniform layers using spray-coating on top of the crystalline surface.[2][5]

Alongside electron transport layers, Taylor has studied electromagnetic interference (EMI) blocking films, which limits damage to smartphones and other wearable technologies.[2][6] The films consist of MXenes, two-dimensional transition metal carbides that are highly conductive and the ability to shield from electromagnetic interference.[6][7]

Taylor has worked on electrochemical fuel cells and batteries.[8] In lithium-ion batteries, the electrodes are typically composed of two-dimensional nanosheets, with the anodes (negative electrodes) made from graphitic carbon nitride.[9] Unfortunately, whilst graphitic carbon nitride are low-cost and scalable, they have poor conductivity and are poor storage capacity for sodium-ions, meaning they cannot simply be used for sodium-ion batteries.[9] He proposed the use of graphitic carbon nitride electrodes coated in a mixture of asphalt and urea. The altered stacked multilayer graphitic carbon electrodes are chemically stable and can enhance the sodium ion storage capacity.[9]

• 2010 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers[10][11]
• 2010 National Science Foundation CAREER Award[12]
• 2011 Yale Greer Memorial Prize[1]
• 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar[13]
• 2020 The Community of Scholars Most Inspiring Black scientists in America[8]

• Jing-Shun Huang; Tenghooi Goh; Xiaokai Li; et al. (5 May 2013). "Polymer bulk heterojunction solar cells employing Förster resonance energy transfer". Nature Photonics. 7 (6): 479–485. doi:10.1038/NPHOTON.2013.82. ISSN 1749-4885. Wikidata Q59186954.
• Yeonwoong Jung; Xiaokai Li; Nitin K Rajan; André D Taylor; Mark A Reed (17 December 2012). "Record high efficiency single-walled carbon nanotube/silicon p-n junction solar cells". Nano Letters. 13 (1): 95–99. doi:10.1021/NL3035652. ISSN 1530-6984. PMID 23237412. Wikidata Q59186958.
• Marcelo Carmo; Ryan C Sekol; Shiyan Ding; Golden Kumar; Jan Schroers; André D Taylor (3 March 2011). "Bulk metallic glass nanowire architecture for electrochemical applications". ACS Nano. 5 (4): 2979–2983. doi:10.1021/NN200033C. ISSN 1936-0851. PMID 21370891. Wikidata Q83522071.

Taylor is married to Jacquelyn Taylor, an American nurse scientist and professor at the Rory Meyers College of Nursing.[5]