Postdoctoral Research Associate 2017 − Present
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Advisor: Prof. Qian Chen
- Microstructure development: My work unraveled, for the first time, the existence and full evolution of transformation-induced “oriented phase domains” in cathodes during electrochemical ion insertion. These domains contain different crystallographic orientations, representing an important class of microstructural heterogeneity widely studied in ceramics and metallurgy but uncharted in energy storage materials before.
- Concurrent imaging method: My work advanced a state-of-the-art concurrent imaging method by synergistically integrating 4D-STEM and EELS. It enables the simultaneous characterization of the material crystallographic structure and chemical phase at the nanometric length scale, which was previously inaccessible.
- Phase transformation pathways: My work unraveled the role of the interfacial interactions and particle sizes on the phase diagram of the insertion compound.
Ph.D. Candidate 2011 − 2017
University of Pennsylvania, Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering
Advisor: Prof. Cherie Kagan
- Materials of new properties: I developed a hybrid ligand exchange strategy to engineer interparticle interactions between colloidal nanocrystals in an analog way and to design materials with optical properties difficult or impossible to achieve in bulk form.
- Solution-based nanofabrication: My work developed a large-area, low-cost nanofabrication process using nanoimprinting and solution-based nanocrystal deposition to construct anisotropic, subwavelength, plasmonic nanoinclusions for optical metasurfaces.
- Ultrasensitive, mechanically responsive metasurfaces: My work developed a microstructure design that improves the mechano-sensitivity of mechanically responsive optical metasurfaces by 10 times. This work has gained momentum and led to the successful application of a patent.