Wu, assistant professor of industrial engineering, won SST's Annual Early Career Best SST Paper Award in October 2017. His paper was also chosen in February 2018 for the journal's 2017 Highlights Collection.

The paper, co-written with Wu Group PhD students Shengjie Gao, Yixiu Wang, and Ruoxing Wang, is titled "Piezotronic effect in 1D van der Waals solid of elemental tellurium nanobelt for smart adaptive electronics", and was published in September 2017 by the U.K.'s IOP Publishing Ltd.

According to the SST website, piezoelectricity is "a phenomenon known for centuries...an effect that is about the production of electrical polarization in a substance as the pressure on it changes. In turn, the converse effect produces a mechanical deformation (strain) upon the application of an electric field through the piezoelectric material. This special issue focuses on state-of-the-art international advances in coupling between piezoelectric-induced polarization and/or strain and semiconductor behaviors and functionalities."

Read Wu's abstract or full article (Semiconductor Science & Technology, Vol. 32, No. 10 ).