Current job duties: first-principles calculations for battery materials and protonic fuel cell

Expertise: first-principles calculations, classical molecular dynamics simulations, Monte Carlo simulations

Focus area: oxides, defects, novel electronics, energy and environmental sustainability

Highlights: reported previous work in DOE EFRC Q-MEEN-C on neuromorphic computing when I was a postdoctoral research in Prof. Giulia Galli’s group at U Chicago

PhD Materials Science & Engineering, University of California, Davis, 2018

MS Optical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2014

General Engineering Certificate, 4+4 Dual Degree Program, Ecole Centrale de Lyon, 2014

BS Applied Physics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2011

S. Zhang and G. Galli, “Metallic interface between two insulating phases of La_1-xSr_xCoO_3-d ”, Chemistry of Materials 36, 2096-2105 (2024).

A. Hilbrands^†, S. Zhang^†, C. Zhou, G. Melani, D. H. Wi, D. Lee, Z. Xi, A. R. Head, M. Liu, G. Galli and K.S. Choi, “Impact of varying the photoanode/catalyst interfacial composition on solar water oxidation: the case of BiVO₄(010)/FeOOH photoanodes”, Journal of the American Chemical Society 145, 43, 23639-23650 (2023).

Y. Yuan^†, Y. Yang^†, K. Meihaus, S. Zhang, X. Ge, W. Zhang, R. Faller, J. Long and G. Zhu, “Selective scandium ion capture via coordination templating in a covalent organic framework”, Nature Chemistry 15, 1599-1606 (2023).

S. Zhang, I. Chiu, M. Lee, B. Gunn, M. Feng, T. Park, P. Shafer, A. N’Diaye, F. Rodolakis, S. Ramanathan, A. Frano, I. Schuller, Y. Takamura and G. Galli, “Determine the oxygen stoichiometry of cobaltite thin films”, Chemistry of Materials 34, 2076-2084 (2022).

S. Zhang, H. Vo and G. Galli, “Predicting the onset of metal-insulator transitions in transition metal oxides—a first step in designing neuromorphic devices”, Chemistry of Materials 33, 3187-3195 (2021).

S. Zhang and G. Galli, “Understanding the metal-to-insulator transition in La_xSr_1-xCoO_3-d and its applications for neuromorphic computing”, npj Computational Materials 6, 170 (2020).

H. Vo^†, S. Zhang^†, W. Wang^† and G. Galli, “Lessons learned from first-principles calculations of transition metal oxides”, The Journal of Chemical Physics 154, 174704 (2021). (^†: equal contribution)

Y. Yang, D. Deng, S. Zhang, Q. Meng, Z. Li, Z. Wang, H. Sha, R. Faller, Z. Bian, X. Zou, G. Zhu and Y. Yuan et al., “Porous organic frameworks featured by distinct confining fields for the selective hydrogenation of biomass-derived ketones”, Advanced Materials 32, 1908243 (2020).

S. Zhang, Y. Huang, G. Tetiker, S. Srirman, A. Paterson and R. Faller, “Computational modelling of atomic layer etching of chlorinated germanium surfaces by argon”, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 21, 5898-5902 (2019).

S. Zhang, H. Sha, R. Castro and R. Faller, “Atomistic modeling of La³⁺ doping segregation effect on nanocrystalline yttria-stabilized zirconia”, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 20, 13215-13223 (2018).

For a full list, see: Google Scholar | ORCID

• Invited talk: “First-principles calculations of the structural and electronic properties of cobaltites for neuromorphic applications”, 2024 APS March Meeting
• Q-MEEN-C Distinguished von Neumann Postdoctoral Fellows, DOE EFRC 2021
• Graduate Excellence in Materials Science Sapphire award, 120^th Annual Meeting of the America Ceramic Society 2018