Bio

Dr. Raymond Unocic earned his doctorate in Materials Science and Engineering from The Ohio State University in 2008, and a master’s in Materials Science and Engineering from Lehigh University in 2003. Since 2009, Dr. Unocic has been an Alvin M. Weinberg Fellow, Senior R&D Staff Scientist, and Group Leader for the Materials MicroÅnalysis Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He has published nearly 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, authored four book chapters, and holds five U.S. Patents. His awards include the National Collegiate Inventors Award, the MicroAnalysis Society’s Birks Award, two R&D 100 awards, and several ORNL-UT Battelle Research Team Awards.

Dr. Unocic’s research expertise lies in aberration-corrected, analytical, cryo, and in situ/operando scanning transmission electron microscopy. His research program is dedicated to pioneering novel microscopy-based characterization methods for nanoscience research to probe atomic-scaled structure, chemistry, and dynamic behavior of materials to establish structure-property-function correlations.

Areas of Research:

• Electronic, Optical, and Magnetic Materials
• Energy Materials
• Catalysis
• Materials Characterization
• Nanomaterials
• Structural Materials

Posts

Goodbye, Titan!

Publications

• 1 From photons to electrons: making electron microscopy a local discovery engine for materials , ChemRxiv (2026)
• Autonomous fabrication of tailored defect structures in 2D materials using machine learning-enabled scanning transmission electron microscopy , npj Computational Materials (2026)
• Building Defects on Purpose: Automated STEM for Atomic Precision Automated STEM for Precision Defect Fabrication , Microscopy and Microanalysis (2026)
• First-principles investigation of structure-property relationships in stable and metastable MXenes , Physical Review Materials (2026)
• From photons to electrons: making electron microscopy a local discovery engine for materials , ChemRxiv (2026)
• Ultrasensitive soft vibration sensors based on atomically thin metal dichalcogenide ribbon networks , Science Advances (2026)
• A Panoramic View of MXenes via an Atomic Coordination‐Based Design Strategy , Advanced Functional Materials (2025)
• In-situ Monitoring of Automated Defect Formation in STEM , Microscopy and Microanalysis (2025)
• Investigating the impact of preparation routes on the properties of copper-decorated silicon particles as anode materials for lithium-ion batteries , Next Energy (2025)
• Direct Fabrication of Atomically Defined Pores in MXenes Using Feedback‐Driven STEM , Small Methods (2024)

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