Dr. Zhihai Li
Zhihai Li was born in the northeast of China – Heilongjiang Province. The peaceful country life brought him a lot of beautiful memories. He became quite interested in nature during his childhood and won the third prize in the National Olympic Chemistry Contest in 1988. He was the only one who ever won such a prize at his school. His excellent performance allowed him to enter into the Department of Chemistry at Jilin University, where he received rigorous training in chemistry during his bachelor and master studies.
In 2002, he joined Prof. Li-Jun Wan’s group at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) to study electro-chemistry and electro-chemical scanning tunneling microscopy (EC-STM). He started his Ph.D. studies in 2003 in Prof. Thomas Wandlowski’s electro-chemical nano-science group at the Research Center Juelich in Germany, where he dived deep into single crystal electro-chemistry, molecular assembly, nano-structures and materials, and metal deposition on single crystal electrodes Au(111), Pt(111), HOPG using EC-STM combined with electro-chemistry.
In 2009, he joined Prof. Nongjian Tao’s lab at Arizona State University. Using the electro-chemical STM break junction technique, he investigated the single molecule conductivity of a series of coronenes. Furthermore, he explored the molecular conductance and electro-chemical gating effect of a series of custom-designed perylene molecules.
In addition to his electro-chemical STM knowledge and skills, he is also an expert in ambient STM, single crystal electro-chemistry, STM break junctions, molecular assembly, electron transfer at the nano-scale, Atomic Force Microscopy, surface enhanced IR spectroscopy, etc.
In August 2010, he joined the Borguet research group, where he led the Scanning Probe and Single Molecule Team in Borguet Laboratory, focusing on electron transfer and single molecule conductance of molecules with a special focus on the tailored porphyrins with multiple contacts and custom-designed multi-porphyrun molecular wires. He also worked on anchoring and media effect on the molecular conductance, as well as the electro-chemical STM studies of functional molecules at electrified interfaces.
In Fall 2014, Dr. Li joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at Ball State University.
Dr. Zhihai Li’s CV