Professor Zhigang Chen

Biography

WORKING EXPERIENCE

Currently, I am a Capacity Building Professor of Energy Materials at the School of Chemistry and Physics, Queensland University of Technology (QUT). As a continuing full-time staff member in Energy Materials, I spend 50% of my time on research, 30% on combined teaching/HDR student supervision, and 20% professional service.

Before this, I was a Professor of Energy Materials at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). Before moving to USQ (in 2016), I was working at the University of Queensland (UQ) as ARC Australian Postdoctoral (APD) Fellow (now ARC’s DECRA), QLD Smart Future Fellow, Senior Research Fellow, Honorary Associate Professor (2016), and Honorary Professor (2020).

In 2012, I won a Queensland International Fellowship that allowed me to undertake thermoelectric research at California Institute of Technology (CalTech) for four months as a visiting fellow in the group of Professor Jeff Snyder (Clarivate/Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher). In 2013, I continued to visit CalTech for two months as a visiting fellow in the group of Professor Jeff Snyder. In addition, I also visited the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for one week as a Visiting Scholar in the group of Professor Kang Long Wang. In 2013, I also visited Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Science (SIC-CAS) for several weeks as a visiting professor in the group of Professor Lidong Chen (Clarivate/Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher).

AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS

Clarivate Web of Science Highly Cited Researchers 2021 (0.1%)
Clarivate Web of Science Highly Cited Researchers 2020 (0.1%)
USQ Research Excellence Award 2020
Mendeley Global Top 2% Researcher 2021
Mendeley Global Top 2% Researcher 2020
Mendeley Global Top 2% Researcher 2019
“Shi Changxu paper” from Elsevier, 2016
Outstanding Reviewer Award from Elsevier, 2015
Queensland Smart State Futures Fellowship 2012-2015
Queensland International Fellowship for Caltech 2012
UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award 2011
Australian International Science Linkage Fellowship, 2010
ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship 2009-2011
UQ Postdoctoral Fellowship 2009-2011 (relinquished)
Nominated “Excellent Ph. D thesis of CAS 2009

RESEARCH AREA

Prof. Dr. Chen's expertise is in sustainable functional materials, thermoelectrics, advanced manufacturing, and advanced microscopy. As a lead Chief Investigator or Chief Investigator, Dr Chen has successfully won 5 ARC Discovery grants (4 as lead CI and 1 as APD Fellow), 1 ARC Research Hub, 3 ARC Linkage, 2 ARC LIEF grant, 1 Australian Coal Association Research Program, over 10 Industry Investments, 2 Queensland smart future funds, 1 international linkage grant from the Australian Academy of Sciences, 1 UQ foundation excellence Award, and 10 UQ/USQ grants with a total of 15M. Dr Chen is one Clarivate Web of Science highly cited researcher with 345 peer-reviewed publications, 5 patents, and over 40 plenary/keynote/invited talks. His publications have been cited >23,000 times (Scopus) with H index of 80.

Research Area

Sustainable Energy Materials

To develop high performance thermoelectric materials for energy conversion, I originally fabricated several unique thermoelectric materials via nanostructure engineering and band engineering to enhance their efficiency. Dr Chen has realised world-record figure of merit (ZT) in a few thermoelectric systems. These studies have led to world-leading journal publications. To develop high performance thermoelectric materials for waste-heat recovery, Dr Chen has originally proposed to rationally design thermoelectric nanomaterials to tune electronic structures by band engineering to innovatively develop high-performance metal selenide nanomaterials. These comprehensive studies have resulted in high-impact journal publications and Australian patents.

Design Optimisation for Emerging Manufacturing Processes
To meet the urgent need in the new manufacturing processes in nanoelectronics and nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), Dr Chen innovatively developed new sensors, photodetectors, and chips integrated with thermoelectric devices or spintronic devices. By using a new packaging process, Dr Chen manipulates devices using individual nanostructures, making nanostructure-based device more economical for lower cost. These new manufacturing processes have made several significant breakthroughs, as evidenced in his extensive publications.

Advanced Manufacturing for Functional Materials

To meet the industry applications for automotive waste-heat recovery, searching high-performing thermoelectric systems and new processing methods become critical for their practical applications. To avoid high-cost manufacturing of thermoelectric materials, Dr Chen has developed several cost-effective manufacturing processes, such as solvothermal methods and microwave-assisted solvothermal methods, to fabricate low-cost, low-toxic thermoelectric materials; from which high energy-conversion-efficiency (>15%) has been realized in my developed system. This research has attracted industrial interest and investments from HBIS groups, NQ Minerals, Cook medicals, BHP Billiton, and Defense Science and Technology Group.

Advanced Microscopy for Energy Materials

The development of nanostructures is a global research focus due to their potential applications in the energy sector. However, their structure-property link is unclear due to the lack of direct correlation between their structure and properties. Here, through closely correlating the structure (and structural variations) and properties (and varied properties) simultaneously determined from individual nanostructures inside a Cs-correct STEM, Dr Chen has established the intrinsic structure-property link and observed the intrinsic defects and defect chemistry, leading to a few significant outcomes.

PUBLICATIONS

Summary

>360 journal papers, >22,600 Scopus Citations (www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=57188708630), 80 Scopus H-index, 33 ESI Highly Cited paper (1%) and 1 Hot paper (0.1%).

>150 papers with impact factor of >10
1 Nature Energy (2021 IF= 67.439)
1 Nature Nanotechnology (2021 IF=39.213)
1 Nature Sustainability (2021 IF=27.157)
1 Chemical Reviews (2021 IF= 72.087)
1 Joule (2021 IF=46.048)
3 Progress in Materials Science (2021 IF= 48.165)
4 Energy & Environmental Science (2021 IF=39.714)
1 Materials Science and Engineering R: Report (2021 IF=33.667)
13 Advanced Materials (2021 IF=32.086)
4 Journal of the American Chemical Society (2021 IF= 16.383)
2 Angewandte Chemie-International Edition (2021 IF= 16.823)
16 Advanced Energy Materials (2020 IF=29.698)
1 Materials Today (2021 IF=26.943)
1 InfoMat (2021 IF=24.798)
1 Trends in Chemistry (2021 IF= 22.448)
1 ACS Energy Letters (2021 IF=23.991)
1 Energy Storage Materials (2021 IF=20.831)
15 Advanced Functional Materials (2021 IF=19.924)
2 Nano Today (2021 IF=18.962)
1 Applied Physics Reviews (2021 IF=19.527)
18 Nano Energy (2021 IF=19.069)
13 ACS Nano (2021 IF=18.027)
3 Advanced Science (2021 IF=17.521)
1 Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews (20210 IF= 16.799)
18 Chemical Engineering Journal (2021 IF=16.744)
2 Materials Horizons (2021 IF=15.717)
2 Small Methods (2021 IF=15.367)
3 Small (2020 IF=15.153)
4 Nature Communications (2021 IF=14.919)
13 Journal of Materials Chemistry A (2021 IF=12.732)
3 Nano Letters (2021 IF=12.262)
6 Materials Today Physics (2021 IF=11.021)
5 Chemistry of Materials (2021 IF= 10.508)
19 ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2021 IF=10.383)
12 Journal of Materials Science and Technology (2021 IF=10.319)
1 Composite part B: Engineering (2021 IF=11.322)
1 Chemical Science (2021 IF= 9.969)
4 Journal of Colloid and Interface Science (2021 IF= 9.965)
1 NPG Asia Materials (2021 IF=9.570)
2 Applied Materials Today (2021 IF= 8.663)

Research support income
Since 2009, I have attracted a number of competitive grants to support my research, including one prestigious UQ postdoctoral fellowship (2009), ARC APD Fellowship (2009), five ARC Discovery Grants (four as lead CI and one as ARC APD fellowship), one ARC Research hub, two ARC Linkage Grant (one as lead CI), two ARC LIEF Grant, >10 Industry Investments (eight as sole CI), two Queensland Smart Futures Funds (sole CI), and >10 University Grants (six UQ as sole CI; three USQ as sole CI; and one QUT Capacity Building Professor Program as sole CI ($3M) for a total of ~A$20,000,000. Since 2016, a few key grants are listed:

Industry investment from Sinopec (2022-2024, A$480K) Z.-G. Chen, Photovoltaic solar cell-thermoelectric hybrid power generation
ARC Linkage Project (2021-2023, LP200300887, A$428K+Industry partner 300K) Z.-G. Chen, J. Zou, M. Dargusch, X. L. Shi, Wearable thermoelectrics for personal heat management
ARC Research Hub (2021-2026, IH200100035, A$5M, sub-project ~300K (ARC)+300K (industry partner)) Prof. Y. Chen; Prof I. Gentle; Prof S. Qiao; Prof J. Bell; Prof Z. Guo; Prof L. Wang; Prof C. Barrow; Prof H. Liu; Prof D. Cahill; Prof Y. Chen; Dr Md Mokhlesur Rahman; A/Prof W. Yang; Em/Prof C. Cook; Prof Dr Z.-G. Chen; Dr J. Knott; Dr S. Mateti; Dr Y. Bai; Dr B. Yu; Mr C. Karamountzos; Dr A. Cornejo; Dr Z. Dong; Mr S. Li; Mrs H. Hou; Mr C. Jordaan; Dr Y. Chen; Mr A. El Safety; Dr C. Ye; Mr M. Winfield, ARC Research Hub in New Safe and Reliable Energy Storage and Conversion Technologies
ARC Discovery Project (2021-2023, DP210101220, A$416,578) Z.-G. Chen, J. Zou, M. Hong, Cost-effective metal selenide materials for solid-state devices
ARC Discovery Project (2019-2022, DP190101781, A$458,000) Z.-G. Chen, J. Zou, High mobility Dirac semimetal for solid state devices
ARC LIEF Project (2021, LE210100036, A$950k+A$950k) Prof R. Wepf; Prof J. Zou; Prof D. Golberg; Prof R. Tilley; Prof H. Zhao; Prof J. Bell; Prof R. De Marco; Prof M. Dargusch; Prof Y. Yamauchi; Prof W. Bowen; Prof H. Wang; Prof Z. G. Chen; A/Prof S. Chang; A/Prof D. Kent; Dr Y. Liu, A customised triple-beam microscope for precise fabricating/characterizing.
ARC Discovery Project (DP150100056, 2014-2017, A$306K) Z.-G. Chen, J. Drennan, D.J. Snyder, Development of High Performance Nanostructured (Bi, Sb)2Te3 Nanomaterials
ARC Linkage Project (LP140100992, 2015-2010, $194K+$110K) J. Zhu, Z.-G. Chen, A Fundamental Study of the Breakage of Gibbsite and Smelter Grade Alumina