Lei Zhai

Polymeric Materials, Surface Science and Engineering

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Associate Professor of Nanoscience Technology Center and the Department of Chemistry Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, 2002 Phone: 407-882-2847 Office: PVL 424 Zip: 32816-0150 E-mail: lzhai@ucf.edu NanoScience Webpage: http://www.nanoscience.ucf.edu/faculty/zhai.php Research Videos:Dr. Lei Zhai's Laboratory View Full Curriculum Vita

February, 2010: The NanoScience Technology Center is proud to announce that three of its faculty members received the prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (NSF CAREER) award in 2008. The CAREER recipients are Drs. Saiful Khondaker (joint Physics appointment), Andre Gesquiere (joint Chemistry appointment), and Lei Zhai (joint Chemistry appointment). This is a tremendous accomplishment for the three-year old NSTC. Only a few individuals are chosen each year for this award and it is highly unusual for so many to be awarded to a single center or department. As described in the NSF web site: "The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization."

Research

Polyelectrolyte Multilayer Films for Sensing and Tissue Engineering.
Polyelectrolyte multilayer films are assembled on the molecular level, and there is unequaled control of thickness, molecular architecture, and composition. In addition, these films have been shown to coat virtually any surface or geometry, use aqueous based processing, and are extremely easy to produce. These factors allow the polyelectrolyte multilayers to be a good molecularly imprinted polymeric (MIP) system for large biomolecules. It is of interest from both a fundamental and technological standpoint to determine if the pores in the porous multilayer films can close with biomolecules or living cells trapped inside. The research will explore the possibilities to load biomolecules and cells into porous multilayer films, and the applications of these films in making MIPs and tissue engineering.

Smart Surfaces
Factors that determine the surface wettability are the surface roughness and surface chemical properties. The research aims at functionalizing the surfaces of porous multilayer structures with various molecules that can change their conformations with environmental stimuli such as temperature and electrical potential, immobilizing gold nanoparticles inside porous structures, and modulating local temperature changes with incident lasers. Our goal is to build surfaces that are able to switch from superhydrophilicity to superhydrophobicity by temperature, an incident laser or an electrical field. By incorporating the patterning technique that we have developed, we will also explore the fabrication of switchable microfluidic devices and microarrays for sensing.

Conductive Polymer Nanowires and Composites
The major research themes in molecular electronics are the construction of electronic circuits in which molecular systems act as connection elements, measurement and understanding of their voltage-current response. The research aims at the construction of nanojunctions containing gold nanoparticles and conductive polymers and the measurement of the charge transport of these nanojunctions using ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunelling spectroscopy (UHV-STS).

Selected Publications

1. .ucSarkar, S.; Zou, J.; Liu, J.; Xu, C.; An, L.; Zhai, L. “Polymer-Derived Ceramic Composite Fibers with Aligned Pristine Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes” ACS Applied Materials & Interface 2010, ASAP.
2. Joung, D.; Chunder, A.; Zhai, L.; Khondaker, S. I.  “High Yield Fabrication of Chemically Reduced Graphene Oxide Field Effect Transistors by Dielectrophoresis” Nanotechnology, 2010, 16, 165202.
3. Sharma, R.; Karakoti, A.; Seal, S.; Zhai, L. “MWCNT-PSS Supported Polypyrrol/Manganese Oxide Nano-Composite for High Performance Electrochemical Electrodes” J. Power Sources 2010, 195, 1256.
4. Chunder, A.; Liu, J.; Zhai, L. “Reduced Graphene Oxide/Poly(3-hexylthiophene) Supramolecular Composites” Macromol. Rapid Commun. 2010, 31, 380.
5. Liu, J.; Arif, M.; Zou, J.; Khondaker, S. I.; Zhai, L. “Controlling Poly(3-hexylthiophene) Crystal Dimension: Nanowhiskers and Nanoribbons” Macromolecules, 2009,42, 9390.
6. Zou, J.; Tran, B.; Huo, Q.; Zhai, L. “Transparent Carbon Nanotube/Poly (3, 4-ethylenedioxythiophene) Composite Electrical Conductors” Soft Materials 2009, 7, 355.
7. Sharma, R.; Zhai, L. “Multiwall Carbon Nanotube Supported Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)/Manganese Oxide Nanocomposite Electrode for Supercapacitors” Electrochim. Acta 2009, 54, 7148.
8. Dai, Q.; Li, Y.; Zhai, L.; Sun, W. “3, 4-Ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT)-Based π-Conjugated Oligomers: Facile Synthesis and Excited-state Properties” J. Photochem. Photobio. A: Chem. 2009, 206,164.
9. Liu, J.; Zou, J.; Zhai, L. “Bottom-up Assembly of Poly(3-hexylthiophene) on Carbon Nanotubes: 2D Building Blocks for Nanoscale Circuits” (Cover Featured) Macromol. Rapid Commun. 2009, 30,1387.
10. 10.  Dhir, V.; Natarajan, A.; Stanceescu, M.; Chunder, A.; Bhargava, N.; Das, M.; Zhai, L.; Molnar, P. “Patterning of Diverse Mammalian Cell Types in Serum Free Medium with Photoablation” Biotechnol. Prog. 2009, 25, 594.
11. 11.  Londe, G.; Chunder, A.; Zhai, L.; Cho, H. J.  “An Analytical Model for the Wettability Switching Characteristic of a Nanostructured Thermoresponsive Surface” Appl. Phys. Lett. 2009, 94, 164104.
12. 12.  Chunder, A.; Etcheverry, K.; Wadsworth, S.; Boreman, G. D.; Zhai, L. “Fabrication of Antireflection Coatings on Plastics Using the Spraying Layer-by-layer Self-assembly Technique” Journal of the Society for Information Display (invited), 2009, 17, 389.
13. 13.  Scolari, L.; Gauza, S.; Xianyu, H.; Zhai, L. ; Eskildsen, L.; Akleskhold, T. T.; Wu, S. –S.; Bjarklev, A. “Frequency Tunability of Solid-Core Photonic Crystal Fibers Filled with Nanoparticle-Doped Liquid Crystals” Opt. Exp. 2009, 17, 3754.
14. 14.  Stokes, P.; Liu, L.; Zou, J.; Zhai, L.; Huo, Q.;  Khondaker, S. I. “Photoresponse in Large Area Multi-walled Carbon Nanotube/Polymer Nanocomposite Films” Appl. Phys. Lett. 2009, 94, 042110.
15. 15.  Zou, J.; Khondaker, S. I.; Huo, Q.; Zhai, L. “A General Strategy to Disperse and Functionalize Carbon Nanotubes Using Conjugated Block Copolymers” Adv. Funct. Mater. 2009, 19, 479.
16. 16.  Chunder, A.; Etcheverry, K.; Londe, G.; Cho, H. J.; Zhai, L. “Conformal Switchable Superhydrophobic/Hydrophilic Surfaces for Microscale Flow Control” Colloids Surf., A 2009, 333, 187.
17. 17.  Zou, J.; Chen, H.; Chunder, A.; Yu, Y.; Huo, Q.; Zhai, L. “A Simple Preparation of Superhydrophobic and Conductive Nanocomposite Coating from a Carbon Nanotube-Conjugated Block Copolymer Dispersion.” Adv. Mater. 2008, 20, 3337.
18. 18.  Sarkar, S.; Chunder, A.; Fei, W.; An, L.; Zhai, L. “Superhydrophobic Mats of Polymer Derived Ceramics.” J. Am. Ceram. Soc. 2008, 91, 2751.
19. 19.  Zou, J.; Liu, L.; Chen, H.; Khondaker, S. I.; McCullough, R. D.; Huo, Q.; Zhai, L. “Dispersion of Pristine Carbon Nanotubes Using Conjugated Block Copolymers” Adv. Mater. 2008, 20, 2055.
20. 20.  Londe, G.; Chunder, A.; Wesser, A.;  Zhai, L.; Cho, H. J. “Microfluidic Valves Based on Superhydrophobic Nanosctructures and Switchable Thermosensitive Surface for Lab-on-a-chip (LOC) Systems” Sens. Actuators, B 2008, 132, 431.
21. 21.  Chang, N. –B.; Wanielista, M.; Hossain, F.; Zhai, L.; Lin, K. –S. “Integrating Nanoscale Zero-valent Iron and Titanium Dioxide for Nutrient Removal in Stormwater Systems” NANO 2008, 3, 297.
22. 22.  Zhang, L.; Wang, Y.; Wei, Y.; Xu, W.; Fang, D.; Zhai, L.; Lin, K.-C.; An, L. “A Silicon Carbonitride Ceramic with Anomalously High Piezoresistivity” J. Am. Ceram. Soc. 2008, 91, 1346.
23. 23.  Chen, H.; Muthuraman, H.; Stokes, P.; Zou, J; Liu, X.; Wang, J; Huo, Q.; Khondaker, S. I.; Zhai, L. “Dispersion of Carbon Nanotubes and Polymer Nanocomposite Fabrication Using Trifluoroacetic Acid as a Co-solvent” Nanotechnology 2007, 18, 415606.
24. 24.  Chunder, A.; Sarkar, S.; Yu, Y.; Zhai, L. “Fabrication of Ultrathin Polyelectrolyte Fibers and Their Controlled Release Properties” Colloids Surf. , B 2007, 58, 172.

Graduate Students

The graduate students will be part of a new group, situated in a brand new laboratory, pursuing exciting projects in an interdisciplinary field of chemistry, physics, biology and nanoscience. They will receive a highly interdisciplinary education covering topics ranging from polymer synthesis to device physics. The future success of many emerging technologies currently under development in this country clearly depends on an expanded work force of such diverse scientists.