Dr. Tianyu Zhu

I am currently a postdoctoral scholar at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with research interest in synthetic polymer chemistry and materials for energy storage. I obtained a bachelor's degree from Nanjing University, then earned my Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in December 2019. During my graduate program, I also served as an officer for ACS POLY/PMSE Student Chapter to organize various activities, and as a graduate student supervisor for ACS Project Seed Program at UofSC to mentor high school students. I also mentored a few undergraduate/graduate students. My doctoral research in Prof. Chuanbing Tang's group focused on synthetic polyelectrolytes for energy storage applications. A major finding of my Ph.D. work was to establish a synthetic platform on a new class of metal-containing cations and polymers for ion exchange. My research at Berkeley National Lab is mainly focused on the mixed ionic-electronic transport in polymer materials and advanced manufacturing technology for surface coating. I designed, synthesized, and licensed several synthetic polymer binders to support aqueous-based manufacturing and high-temperature "roll-to-roll" processing for the battery industry. Besides, I explored the evolution and transport mechanisms in conductive polymers by correlating the molecular spectroscopy information with morphological and electrochemical analyses. More recently, I am coupling the synthetic approach with engineering mechanics to design and evaluate polymers for a circular economy. My future research is intended to apply synthetic chemistry and advanced macromolecular characterization techniques to address fundamental challenges in chemistry, environmental and materials science.