Professor of Chemistry
Professor and Associate Director of Institute for Shock Physics

Address

Fulmer 204C & ISP 217
Pullman, WA 99164

(509) 335-2712
email: csyoo@wsu.edu
Group web-page: http://yoo.chem.wsu.edu/
ISP web-page: http://shock.wsu.edu/

Education

Research

Professor Yoo received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 1986 from UCLA and then spent three years at WSU as a Postdoctral Research Fellow.  In 1989, he joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he led a large multi-disciplinary research group for High Pressure Physics Program. After a long career at the national laboratory, in 2007 he returned to WSU as a new faculty member at the Chemistry Department and the Institute for Shock Physics.  Professor Yoo won twice in 1995 and 2006 the DOE awards for Excellence in Weapons Materials Research. He currently serves as US Regional Editor for High Pressure Research, and is a member of American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, American Geophysics Union, and Materials Research Society.

Our group focuses on Extreme Materials Research at the pressure-temperature conditions of the Earth’s and Joviant planetary interiors, where materials alter their properties in many fundamental ways and, thus, provide exciting opportunities for one to discover new materials, novel phenomena, and exotic states of matter- not present at the ambient condition. Examples are numerous, including recently discovered stishovite-like carbon dioxide polymer, metallic hydrogen, superconducting lithium, superionic water, novel metal nitrides, superionic lithium nitrides, and many others. High-pressure research will ultimately establish a new Periodic Table of the elements and compounds with completely redefined chemical and physical properties. Our extreme materials research helps unveil such a new materials order and understand its governing rules.

Our research utilizes modern static and dynamic high-pressure technologies coupled with the state-of-the-art laser spectroscopy and the x-ray diffraction and x-ray spectroscopy at national synchrotron facilities. Because materials often behave differently under static and dynamic compressions, we emphasize an integrated approach of static and dynamic experiments over  extended ranges of pressure, temperature, and strain rate.

Materials of our research interest range from fundamental materials of quantum solids, molecular solids, covalent and ionic solids, and f-and d-electron metals to functional materials such as reactive nanoparticles, hydrogen storage materials, strongly correlated systems, and high energy density solids. Because of its multi-disciplinary nature of high-pressure materials research, we often collaborate with theorists and scientists well beyond our group and Chemistry department, including Institute for Shock Physics, Materials Science Program, and National Laboratories.  

Publications