Research Interests

Computational materials physics and materials informatics, for applications in

• Electrochemical energy storage, including super-capacitor and lithium-ion battery
• Nuclear fuel materials, e.g. actinide oxides
• Rare earth materials for solid state lighting, scintillators and permanent magnet
• Strongly correlated materials, magnetism and the bio-nano interface
• Computational methods: compressive sensing; non-local exchange-correlation; LDA+U and hybrid functional; cluster expansion; structure prediction; molecular dynamics; Monte-Carlo

Personal Background

Fei Zhou joined LLNL as a staff physicist in July, 2013. His graduate thesis with Prof. Gerbrand Ceder, entitled "Models for transition metal oxides and for protein design", studied with computational methods the electron correlation effects in transition metal oxides, as well as the energetics of proteins and the nanotube-protein interface. Dr. Zhou continued as a postdoc at MIT in 2006, where he studied thermodynamics of transition metal oxides such as LiFePO₄ and Fe₃O₄, and used first-principles data-mining and high-throughput approaches for battery design. In 2008 he moved to work with Prof. Vidvuds Ozolins at University of California, Los Angeles as a postdoc (2008-2009) and then assistant research engineer (2009-2013). While there, he carried out computational characterization of transition metal oxides (RuO₂, Nb₂O₅, WO₃) for super-capacitive energy storage, developed an improved LDA+U method for magnetism and crystal field of rare earth compounds and actinide nuclear fuels, and studied compressive sensing based models for materials physics.

Ph.D., Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006

B.S., Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, 2001

L. Nelson, V. Ozolins, C. Shane Reese, F. Zhou and G. Hart, Cluster expansion made easy with Bayesian compressive sensing http://prb.aps.org/abstract/PRB/v88/i15/e155105, Physical Review B 88, 155105 (2013)

L. Nelson, G. Hart, F. Zhou and V. Ozolins, Compressive sensing as a paradigm for building physics models http://prb.aps.org/forward/PRB/v87/i3/e035125, Physical Review B 87, 035125 (2013)

V. Ozolins, F. Zhou, Y. Liu, and M. Asta, Ruthenia-based electrochemical supercapacitors: In-sights from first-principles calculations http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar3002987, Accounts of Chemical Research 46, 1084 (2013)

X. Lu, D.T. Morelli, Y. Xia, F. Zhou, V. Ozolins, H. Chi, and C. Uher, High Performance Ther- moelectricity in Earth-Abundant Compounds Based on Natural Mineral Tetrahedrites http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.201200650/abstract, Advanced Energy Materials 3, 342 (2013)

F. Zhou and V. Ozolins, Self-consistent density functional calculations of the crystal field levels in lanthanide and actinide dioxides http://prb.aps.org/abstract/PRB/v85/i7/e075124, Physical Review B 85, 075124 (2012)

R. Malik, F. Zhou and G. Ceder, Kinetics of non-equilibrium Li incorporation in LiFePO4 http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v10/n8/full/nmat3065.html, Nature Materials 10, 587 (2011)

F. Zhou and V. Ozolins, Crystal field and magnetic structure of UO2 http://prb.aps.org/abstract/PRB/v83/i8/e085106, Physical Review B 83, 085106 (2011)

F. Zhou and G .Ceder, First-principles determination of charge and orbital interactions in Fe3O4 http://prb.aps.org/abstract/PRB/v81/i20/e205113", Physical Review B 81, 205113 (2010)

F. Zhou and V. Ozolins, Obtaining the correct orbital ground states of PrO2 using a nonspherical self-interaction corrected LDA+U method http://prb.aps.org/abstract/PRB/v80/i12/e125127, Physical Review B 80, 125127 (2009)

F. Zhou, T. Maxisch, and G. Ceder, Configurational electronic entropy and the phase diagram of mixed-valence oxides: The case of LixFePO4, http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v97/i15/e155704 Physical Review Letters 97, 155704 (2006)

F. Zhou, G. Grigoryan, S.R. Lustig, A.E. Keating, G. Ceder, and D. Morgan, Coarse-graining protein energetics in sequence variables http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v95/i14/e148103, Physical Review Letters 95, 148103 (2005)