Clay Watson

Brookhaven National Laboratory

Center for Functional Nanomaterials
Bldg. 735, Room 1045
P.O. Box 5000
Upton, NY 11973-5000

(631) 344-2984
cwatson@bnl.gov

Expertise | Education | Appointments | Publications | Awards

Expertise

2D Quantum Materials, Nanotechnology, Thin Film Deposition, Surface Probe Microscopy

Education

Ph.D., Physics, University of Rochester, 2025

• Dissertation: Electric field-mediated control over strain
  in 2D materials via thin film BiFeO₃, Advisor: Prof. Stephen M. Wu

M.S., Physics, University of Rochester, 2018

B.S., Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, 2015

Professional Appointments

Brookhaven National Laboratory, Center for Functional Nanomaterials

• Scientific Associate, 2025 – Present

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Materials Science Division

• Post-Collegiate Appointee, 2015 – 2017

Selected Publications

• Watson C, Peña T, Abdin M, et al (2022) Dynamic adhesion of 2D materials to mixed-phase BiFeO3 structural phase transitions. Journal of Applied Physics 132:. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0096686
• Hou W, Azizimanesh A, Sewaket A, et al (2019) Strain-based room-temperature non-volatile MoTe2 ferroelectric phase change transistor. Nature Nanotechnology 14:668–673. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-019-0466-2
• Yee TD, Watson CL, Roehling JD, et al (2019) Fabrication and 3D tomographic characterization of nanowire arrays and meshes with tunable dimensions from shear-aligned block copolymers. Soft Matter 15:4898–4904. https://doi.org/10.1039/c9sm00303g

Awards & Recognition

• DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Award, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2022 – 2023
• NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), University of Rochester, 2019 – 2022
• Provost Fellowship, University of Rochester, 2017 – 2019