Lichang Wang | Chemistry and Biochemistry| SIU

Lichang Wang

Professor and Director of Graduate Study

 The Wang research group is currently focused on:

1. Investigating electron excitation and transfer processes in organic small molecules for applications as solar cell materials, photodynamic therapy photosensitizers, fluorescence and luminescence sensors, and other optoelectronic devices.
2. Studying transition metal-based clusters, nanoparticles, and bulk materials to understand their catalytic activities in the oxygen reduction reaction, hydrogen production from natural gas and ethanol, the complete electrochemical oxidation of ethanol, and the conversion of glycerol to value-added chemicals, as well as examining their formation and toxicity.
3. Evaluating various functionals in Density Functional Theory (DFT) to accurately describe the electronic and optical properties of materials and developing pragmatic techniques to improve the accuracy of DFT in modeling electron excitation processes.

Education and Research Experience

B.S. Chemical Engineering, Tianjin University, 1985
M.S. Chemical Engineering, Tianjin University, 1988
Ph.D. Chemistry, University of Copenhagen,1993
Postdoc, University of Copenhagen, 1993-1994
Postdoc, University of Cambridge, 1994-1998
Postdoc, University College London, 1996-1997
Postdoc, The Ohio State University, 1998-2001

Selected Recent Publications

Ruitao Wu and Lichang Wang, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 25(2023)2190-2202: “Insight into the solvent effects on ethanol oxidation on Ir(100)”

Ruitao Wu and Lichang Wang, ChemPhysChem (2022)e202200132-13pgs: “Insights and Activation Energy Surface of the Dehydrogenation of C₂H_xO Species in Ethanol Oxidation Reaction on Ir(100)”.

Ruitao Wu and Lichang Wang, J. Phys. Chem. C 126(2022)21650-21666: “Activity Enhancement of PtIr Catalysts for Complete Ethanol Oxidation Reaction by Tuning C−O Coupling Abilities”.

Krishanthi C. Weerasinghe, Tianyang Wang, Junpeng Zhuang, Haiya Sun, Dongzhi Liu, Wei Li, Wenping Hu, Xueqin Zhou, Lichang Wang, Chem. Phys. Impact 4(2022)100062-8pgs: “Coherently degenerate state engineering of organic small molecule materials to generate Wannier excitons”.