Laboratory of Quantum Materials for Sustainable Technologies

Li Shi received his doctoral, master, and bachelor degrees from University of California at Berkeley, Arizona State University, and Tsinghua University, respectively. He was an IBM Research Staff Member for a year before joining the University of Texas (UT) at Austin as an assistant professor in 2002, followed by appointments to the BF Goodrich Endowed Professorship in Materials Engineering.

At UT Austin, Dr. Shi has been a primary instructor for two undergraduate core courses, Heat Transfer and Experimental Heat Transfer, and two graduate courses, Radiation Heat Transfer and Nanoscale Energy Transport and Conversion. He has taught a large number of students enrolled in these courses.

The research group led by Dr. Shi has demonstrated a set of unique methods based on nanofabricated measurement devices, scanning probe microscopy, and optical spectroscopy to characterize the transport and conversion of quantized energy carriers in nanostructures and complex superstructures. The publications from these works have led to a better understanding of the extraordinary quantum transport phenomena in emerging materials for thermal management, thermal energy storage, solid-state thermoelectric energy conversion, spin caloritronics, and spintronics. In particular, their work has advanced the frontier of ultrahigh thermal conductivity materials, including carbon nanotubes, graphene, hexagonal and cubic boron nitride, and cubic boron arsenide. Meanwhile, their research has made important impact on the studies of thermoelectric, topological, and spintronic materials such as semiconducting chalcogenides, incommensurate chimney ladder and spin chain compounds, and ferromagnetic garnets. Their adventure into nanotechnologies for drug delivery and biomedical imaging has also produced noteworthy results, for example, shape-specific polymeric drug carriers manufactured by nano-imprint lithography. Their current research efforts are focused on electronic and quantum materials for future-generation energy-efficient devices and quantum information technologies.

Among Dr. Shi’s synergetic activities, he has co-organized a National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored workshop on Nanotechnologies for Solar and Thermal Energy Conversion and Storage, the Seventh US-Japan Joint Seminar on Nanoscale Transport Phenomena, and the Third Energy Nanotechnology International Conference of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He has also chaired a number of symposiums and sessions for Materials Research Society (MRS), American Physical Society (APS), and ASME conferences. He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Nanoscale and Microscale Thermophysical Engineering since 2013.

Dr. Shi’s research achievements and professional services have been recognized by the Heat Transfer Memorial Award in Science from ASME, the Invitation Fellowship for Research in Japan from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), the O’Donnell Award in Engineering from the Academy of Medicine, Engineering, and Science of Texas, the ASME Transaction Journal of Heat Transfer Outstanding Reviewer Award, the Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research, and the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation. He is an elected fellow of ASME and APS as well as an active member of the UT Austin Badminton Club.

Selected Publications

1. H.-K. Lyeo, A. A. Khajetoorians, L. Shi, K. P. Pipe, R. J. Ram, A. Shakouri, C. K. Shih, "Profiling the Thermoelectric Power of Semiconductor Junctions with Nanometer Resolution," Science 303, 816-818 (2004)

2. M. T. Pettes and L. Shi, “Thermal and Structural Characterizations of Individual Single-, Double-, and Multi- Walled Carbon Nanotubes,” Advanced Functional Materials 19, 3918–3925 (2009) 

3. J. H. Seol, I. Jo, A. L. Moore, L. Lindsay, Z. H. Aitken, M. T. Pettes, X. Li, Z. Yao, R. Huang, D. Broido, N. Mingo, R. S. Ruoff,  L. Shi, “Two-Dimensional Phonon Transport in Supported Graphene,” Science 328, 213-216 (2010) 

4. A. Weathers, Z. U. Khan, R. Brooke, D. Evans, M. T. Pettes, J. W. Andreasen, X. Crispin, L. Shi, “Significant Electronic Thermal Transport in the Conducting Polymer Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT),” Advanced Materials 27, 2101–2106 (2015)

5. X. Chen, A. Weathers, J. Carrete, S. Mukhopadhyay, O. Delaire, D. A. Stewart, N. Mingo, S. N. Girard, J. Ma, D. L. Abernathy, J. Yan, R. Sheshka, D. P. Sellan, F. Meng, S. Jin, J. Zhou, L. Shi, “Twisting Phonons in Complex Crystals with Quasi-One-Dimensional Substructures,” Nature Communications 6, 6723 (2015)   

6. I. Kholmanov, J. H. Kim, E. Ou, R. S. Ruoff, L. Shi, “Continuous Carbon Nanotube–Ultrathin Graphite Hybrid Foams for Increased Thermal Conductivity and Suppressed Subcooling in Composite Phase Change Materials,” ACS Nano 9, 11699-11707 (2015)

7. K. An, K. S. Olsson, A, Weathers, S. Sullivan, X. Chen, X. Li, L. G. Marshall, X. Ma, N. Klimovich, J. S. Zhou, L. Shi, X. Q. Li, “Magnons and Phonons Optically Driven out of Local Equilibrium in a Magnetic Insulator,” Physical Review Letters 117, 107202 (2016)

8. S. Sullivan, A. K. Vallabhaneni, I. Kholmanov, X. Ruan, J. Murthy, L. Shi, “Optical Generation and Detection of Local Non-equilibrium Phonons in Suspended Graphene,” Nano Letters 17, 2049–2056 (2017)

9. F. Tian, B. Song, X. Chen, N. K. Ravichandran, Y. Lv, K. Chen, S. Sullivan, J. Kim, Y. Zhou, T. - H. Liu, M. Goni, Z. Ding, J. Sun, G. A. G. U. Gamage, H. Sun, H. Ziyaee, S. Huyan, L. Deng, J. Zhou, A. J. Schmidt, S. Chen, C. - W. Chu, P. Y. Huang, D. Broido, L. Shi, G. Chen, Z. Ren, “Unusual High Thermal Conductivity in Boron Arsenide Bulk Crystals,” Science 361, 582 (2018) 

10. B. Smith, G. Coloyan Fleming, K. D. Parrish, F. Wen, E. Fleming, K. Jarvis, E. Tutuc, A. J.H. McGaughey, L. Shi, “Mean Free Path Suppression of Low-Frequency Phonons in SiGe Nanowires, ” Nano Letters 20, 8384−8391 (2020)