Skip to content

Professor Zhigang Chen

Professor Zhigang Chen
Name Zhigang Chen
Position Honorary Professor
Section Centre for Future Materials (Operations)
Email
Qualifications GCertHigherEd Qld , PhD ChineseAcadSci
Languages Mandarin (accredited translator)
Homepage https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=57188708630
The views expressed on staff homepages may not reflect the views of the University.

Biography

Professor Chen is a distinguished Professor in Energy Materials at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), one of youngest Professors in the field of engineering at Australia when he was promoted to be a Professor at the 38-years old in 2018. Before Prof. Chen moved to USQ at 2016, Dr Chen had worked at the University of Queensland (UQ) as an ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellow (2009), QLD Smart Future Fellow (2012), Senior Research Fellow (2016), and Honorary Associate Professor (2016). Dr Chen is also an Honorary Professor at UQ.

His expertise is in functional materials for thermoelectrics and nanoelectronics, and advanced microscopy. His research has been well awarded by receiving a few competitive research grants, as well as prestigious awards/fellowships, all at national, state and university levels. In total, Dr Chen received ~A$20,000,000 in research grants to support the research. Currently, Dr Chen is leading two ARC discovery projects, one sub project at ARC Research Hub, one ARC Linkage project, and four industry investments.

Dr Chen is one Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (Top 0.1% researcher in the world). He has authored over 330 high-impact journal publications including 1 Nature Energy, 1 Nature Nanotechnology; 3 Nature Communications; 1 Chemical Reviews; 2 Progress in Materials Science; 4 Energy & Environmental Science; 1 Joule; 11 Advanced Materials; and 4 Journal of the American Chemical Society. These publications have attracted >19000 times (Scopus, www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=57188708630) and an H index of 70. His google scholar citation is >25,000 with an H index of 77 (https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=vkRX_vgAAAAJ&hl=en). Particularly, in the last three years, Dr Chen has published more than 35 articles per year and attracted over 4,000 citations per year. Dr Chen has delivered over 50 plenary/keynote/invited talks in the international/national conferences. Dr Chen has authored four commercialized patents, which have been attracted industry investments.

Research Career


  • Compound Semiconductors ( 091203 )
  • Functional Materials ( 091205 )
  • Nanotechnology ( 100700 )
  • Compound Semiconductors ( 401603 )
  • Nanotechnology ( 401800 )
  • Functional Materials ( 401605 )
  • Materials Engineering ( 401600 )

His research concentrates in smart materials for thermoelectrics and optoelectronics from synthesizing materials to understanding their underlying physics and chemistry.

His research project (attracting PhD students) is focusing:

1. Design cost-effective and high-efficiency thermoelectric materials and devices

Thermoelectric materials directly convert thermal energy into electrical energy, offering a green and sustainable solution for the global energy dilemma. This project aims to develop inexpensive, abundant, and low-toxic metal selenide nanomaterials for high-efficiency energy conversion using novel industry-level approach, coupled with nanostructure and band engineering strategies. The key breakthrough is to design high performance thermoelectric nanomaterials with engineered chemistry and unique morphology for new generation thermoelectrics. The expected outcomes of this project will lead to an innovative technology for harvesting electricity from waste heat or sun light, which will place Australia at the forefront of energy technologies.

2. Development of Topological Insulators for high speed chips

Topological Insulators (TIs) are a class of quantum materials that exhibit topological surface states. These materials are usually small band gap semiconductors where the bulk of the material is insulating, but they exhibit special surface states that are conducting and topologically protected. The materials are usually made of heavy atoms that give rise to strong spin-orbit coupling and this leads to the formation of surface states that are not destroyed by scattering or impurities. TIs are proving to be ideal materials for study in condensed matter physics, as the physics of these materials is novel and they offer huge scope for developing new theories and for the discovery of new materials.

In this proposal, we describe the methodology to be adopted to obtain high quality materials, for the different experiments proposed. We propose to synthesize a range of materials, some of which are already known to be Topological Insulators and other new materials such as Dirac semimetals and Wyles semimetals.


Dr Chen serves as the associate editor for Journal of Materials Science and Technology (Elsevier, IF=8.1) and editorial board member in several journals, including Progress in Natural Science (Elsevier, IF=4.000); Rare Metals (Springer IF= 2.161); Journal of Advanced Ceramics, Electronics (Springer IF= 2.889); Electronics (MDPI, IF=2.412); Energies (MDPI IF=2.702); and Energy Materials Advances (Science partner journal).
Member of International Thermoelectric Society;
Member of American Chemistry Society;
Member of Australian Microscopy Society
Member of Australian Nanotechnology Network
Member of Australian Materials Research Society


  • Centre for Future Materials (CFM)

Teaching


the University of Queensland
• CHEE 4301: Nanomaterials and their characterization
• CHEE 4302: Electrochemistry and corrosion
• MATE7013: Advanced Manufacturing


5 Years

Supervision


  • Compound Semiconductors ( 091203 )
  • Functional Materials ( 091205 )
  • Compound Semiconductors ( 401603 )
  • Nanotechnology ( 401800 )
  • Functional Materials ( 401605 )
  • Materials Engineering ( 401600 )