Prof Dan Li - Researcher Profile

Dan Li

Address

Materials Engineering
Faculty of Engineering, Clayton

Contact Details

Tel: +61 3 990 59673

Email: Dan.Li2@monash.edu


Biography

A versatile nanoscale building block 

Associate Professor Dan Li is fascinated by graphene, and with good reason. The carbon-based material has extraordinary electrical, optical, thermal and mechanical properties. Dan’s work in discovering an efficient way to produce graphene in large amounts helped him win a Scopus Young Researcher of the Year Award in 2010. Now he’s developing ways to process and assemble it into useful macrostructures to address global challenges related to green energy, water purification, health care and environmental protection.

Graphene is the product of breaking down graphite (a cheap, readily available material commonly used in pencils) into layers one atom thick. It is strong, chemically stable, an excellent conductor of electricity and, importantly, has an extremely high surface area. In fact, the material has such exciting potential that the physicists who discovered it were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. 

Dan now wants to take advantage of its properties to develop a range of innovations and devices. 

“Research on graphene has been growing rapidly since its discovery in 2004,” Dan says. “In the first few years, this field was dominated by physicists who focused on its fundamental properties. As a materials scientist and engineer, I’m more interested in using graphene as a building block to make more real materials.

“The exploitation of graphene-based material faces a key challenge,” Dan says. “Graphene sheets, when brought together, tend to stack together to reform graphite. Many of its unique properties, such as its high specific surface area and peculiar electron transport behaviours, become unavailable in bulk materials.” 

Dan and his team are developing innovative and cost-effective ways to engineer graphene on multiple-length scales to tackle this hurdle. For example, by studying how graphene interacts with water, they have invented a biomimetic technique to prevent re-stacking of graphene in multilayered films. This has enabled a number of important applications.

So far, Dan is most excited about the potential of graphene for energy storage. While Dan acknowledges that lithium ion batteries are suitable for portable devices, he says their application scope will be limited by the high materials cost. Dan thinks graphene could offer a cost-effective alternative for storing renewable energy, such as solar or wind power, on a large scale.

“We’ve discovered that we can stack graphene with more space in between. That’s why we can use it to store a lot of energy,” Dan says. “Another key is that compared to conventional batteries, our graphene-based energy storage devices can be charged very quickly. You could charge a mobile phone in a few seconds or less. That’s particularly useful for electric vehicles.”

Dan’s team is looking at using graphene-based soft materials such as hydrogel films to separate nanoparticles or ions in water or as a nanocarrier for drugs. This could allow for water purification or the controlled release of drugs in implanted devices. 

Since he moved to Australia in 2006, Dan has received three ARC Discovery grants and some smaller grants from the Faculty of Engineering. He was also involved in several Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities grants. 

His research has attracted the investment interest of several companies.

Related Links:

Keywords

Chemical and biomedical sensing, Membrane separation, Nanomaterials, Solution-phase processing of nanomaterials

Qualifications

PHD FOR MATERIAL PHYSICS & CHEMISTRY
Institution: University of Electonic Science & Technology of China
Year awarded: 1999

Postgraduate Research Supervisions

Current Supervision

Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Bio-inspired ultralight and superelastic cellular grapheme monoliths.
Supervisors:
Li, D (Main).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Doped graphene for energy storage.
Supervisors:
Li, D (Joint-co), Liu, Z (Joint).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Electroless plating of aluminium in ionic liquids.
Supervisors:
Li, D (Main), Clarke, S (Associate).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Electrosorption in Nanostructured Graphene Films.
Supervisors:
Li, D (Main).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Enhancement of water evaporation at nano-scale.
Supervisors:
Alan, T (Joint), Liu, Z (Joint-co), Li, D (Associate).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Graphene-based ferromagnetic nanomaterials.
Supervisors:
Li, D (Main).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Graphene/polymer hybrid multi-functional stimuli responsive membranes..
Supervisors:
Li, D (Main).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
High lithium storage performance of v-based/graphene nanocomposites as lithium-ion battery cathode.
Supervisors:
Li, D (Main), Yang, X (Associate).
Program of Study:
(MASTER'S BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Mechanical and pheological properties of graphene oxide reinforced cementitious composites.
Supervisors:
Duan, W (Main), Collins, F (Associate), Li, D (Associate).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
infiltrated graphene-polymer composites for smart membranes.
Supervisors:
Li, D (Main), Simon, G (Joint).

Completed Supervision

Student:
Ngo, Y.
Program of Study:
Nanoparticles functionalized paper for biodiagnostic applications. (PHD) 2012.
Supervisors:
Garnier, G (Main), Li, D (Associate), Simon, G (Associate).
Student:
Qiu, L.
Program of Study:
Restacking Control of Graphene Sheets in their Bulk Films. (Masters) 2010.
Supervisors:
Simon, G (Main), Li, D (Associate).