Dr. Cunzhi Zhang

Former Staff Scientist at UChicago

Education

• Ph.D. in Advanced Materials and Mechanics, Peking University (2019)
• B.S. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, University of Science and Technology of China (2014)

Professional Affiliations

• American Physical Society (APS)

Areas of Interest

• Phonon scattering & thermal transport
• Defects in semiconductors & insulators
• High-temperature structural materials
• Machine learning for force-fields
• Density-functional theory & molecular dynamics simulations

Experience

• Dec. 2024 - Apr. 2025: Staff Scientist, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago
• Nov. 2020 - Dec. 2024: Postdoctoral Scholar, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago
• Oct. 2019 - Nov. 2020: Research Associate, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Hong Kong
• Oct. 2017 - Jan. 2019: Non-degree visiting student, Institute for Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago

Publications (Google Scholar)

• C Zhang, F Gygi, and G Galli
  Charge state and entropic effects affecting the formation and dynamics of divacancies in 3C-SiC
  Phys. Rev. Mater. 8, 046201 (2024)
• C. Zhang*, M. Puligheddu*, L. Zhang, R. Car, and G. Galli (*equal contribution)
  Thermal Conductivity of Water at Extreme Conditions
  J. Phys. Chem. B 127, 7011–7017 (2023)
• C. Zhang, F. Gygi, G. Galli
  Engineering the formation of spin-defects from first principles
  Nat. Commun. 14, 5985 (2023)
• P.-H. Du, C. Zhang, T. Li, and Q. Sun
  Low lattice thermal conductivity with two-channel thermal transport in the superatomic crystal PH₄AlBr₄
  Phys. Rev. B. 107, 155204 (2023)
• J. Sun, M. Hu, C. Zhang, L. Bai, C. Zhang, Q. Wang
  Ultralow Thermal Conductivity of Layered Bi₂O₂Se Induced by Twisting
  Adv. Funct. Mater. 32, 2209000 (2022)
• P.-H. Du, C. Zhang, J. Sun, T. Li, and Q. Sun
  Phase Stability, Strong Four-Phonon Scattering, and Low Lattice Thermal Conductivity in Superatom-Based Superionic Conductor Na₃OBH₄
  ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 14, 47882–47891 (2022)
• Z. Zeng, C Zhang, N Ouyang, Y Chen
  Extreme in-plane phonon blocking in simple chainlike crystals
  Phys. Rev. B 106, 054302 (2022)
• Z. Zeng*, C. Chen*, C. Zhang*, Q. Zhang, and Y. Chen (*equal contribution)
  Critical phonon frequency renormalization and dual phonon coexistence in layered Ruddlesden-Popper inorganic perovskites
  Phys. Rev. B 105, 184303 (2022)
• J. Sun*, C. Zhang*, Z. Yang, Y. Shen, M. Hu, and Q. Wang (*equal contribution)
  Four-Phonon Scattering Effect and Two-Channel Thermal Transport in Two-Dimensional Paraelectric SnSe
  ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 14, 11493-11499 (2022)
• Z. Ye*, C. Zhang*, and G. Galli (*equal contribution)
  Photoelectron spectra of water and simple aqueous solutions at extreme conditions
  Faraday Discuss. Advance Article (2022)
• C. Zhang, Z. Zeng, Q. Sun, and Y. Chen
  Stronger three-phonon interactions revealed by molecular dynamics in materials with restricted phase space
  J. Appl. Phys. 130, 205101 (2021)
• Z. Zeng, C. Zhang, H. Yu, W. Li, Y. Pei, and Y. Chen
  Ultralow and glass-like lattice thermal conductivity in crystalline BaAg₂Te₂: Strong fourth-order anharmonicity and crucial diffusive thermal transport
  Mater. Today Phys. 21, 100487 (2021)
• Z. Zeng, C. Zhang, Y. Xia, Z. Fan, C. Wolverton, and Y. Chen
  Nonperturbative phonon scatterings and the two-channel thermal transport in Tl₃VSe₄
  Phys. Rev. B 103, 224307 (2021)
• Z. Fan, Z. Zeng, C. Zhang, Y. Wang, K. Song, H. Dong, Y. Chen, and T. Ala-Nissila
  Neuroevolution machine learning potentials: Combining high accuracy and low cost in atomistic simulations and application to heat transport
  Phys. Rev. B 104, 104309 (2021)
• Cunzhi Zhang, Federico Giberti, Emre Sevgen, Juan J de Pablo, Francois Gygi, Giulia Galli
  Dissociation of salts in water under pressure
  Nat. Commun. 11, 3037 (2020)
• Yaguang Guo, Cunzhi Zhang, Jian Zhou, Qian Wang, Puru Jena
  Lattice dynamic and instability in pentasilicene: A light single-element ferroelectric material with high curie temperature
  Phys. Rev. Appl. 11, 064063 (2019)
• Cunzhi Zhang, Junyi Liu, Haoming Shen, Xinzheng Li, Qiang Sun
  Identifying the Ground State Geometry of a MoN₂ Sheet through a Global Structure Search and Its Tunable p-Electron Half-Metallicity.
  Chem. Mater. 29, 8588−8593 (2017)
• Cunzhi Zhang, and Qiang Sun
  A honeycomb BeN₂ sheet with a desirable direct band gap and high carrier mobility
  J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 7, 2664-2670 (2016)