Zijie Yan was an academic researcher born in Jingmen, Hubei, China. He is an alumnus of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Guanshan, Hongshan, Wuhan, Hubei and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, United States.
Yan was a faculty member of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA. He was the leader of the Yan Research Group at the university.
In January 2022, Tailei Qi entered the UNC-Chapel Hill as a research assistant and a graduate student at the university’s department of applied physical sciences. Yan became the thesis adviser of Qi, who was a member of the Yan Research Group.
Ruqiang Bao, D.B. Chrisey and Yan co-authored “Transitions of Boron Carbide to B-C-N Thin Film”, published by Materials Research Society symposia proceedings. Materials Research Society in January 2010. They co-authored “Excimer laser ablation of a Pt target in water: The observation of hollow particles”, published by Nanotechnology in March 2010, and “Self-assembly of zinc hydroxide/dodecyl sulfate nanolayers into complex three-dimensional nanostructures by laser ablation in liquid”, published by Chemical Physics Letters in September 2010.
Bao, Chrisey and Yan co-authored “Generation of Ag2O Micro-/Nanostructures by Pulsed Excimer Laser Ablation of Ag in Aqueous Solutions of Polysorbate 80”, published by Langmuir in January 2011, “Charge carrier lifetime in boron carbide thin films”, published by Applied Physics Letters in May 2011, and “Structural evolution of hollow Al 2O 3 particles formed on excimer laser-induced bubbles”, published by Materials Chemistry and Physics in October 2011. They also co-authored “Generation of Ag–Ag 2 O complex nanostructures by excimer laser ablation of Ag in water”, published by Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics in October 2012.
Among Yan’s research interest included optical trapping and manipulation, holography, microfluidics, electronic and photonics nanomaterials. Here are 13 more things about him:
- In 2005, he graduated from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology with bachelor’s degrees in materials science and engineering and computer science.
- In 2007, he graduated from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a master’s degree in physical electronics.
- From 2008 to 2011, he attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he earned his Ph.D. in materials engineering.
- He, Kan Zhu and W.P. Chen co-authored “Fabrication and sintering of mesocrystalline ZnO disks”, published by Materials Letters in February 2009, and “Tomato-Like ZnO Clusters with Complex Crystallization”, published by the Journal of Nanoscience and Nontechnology in November 2009.
- From October 2011 to July 2015, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- In September 2012, the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology C Photochemistry Reviews published “Pulsed laser ablation in liquid for micro-/nanostructure generation”, which he co-authored with Chrisey.
- From August 2015 to June 2019, he was an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York.
- In February 2019, Angewandte Chemie International Edition published “Light‐Driven Self‐Healing of Nanoparticle‐Based Metamolecules”, which he co-authored with Fan Nan. In July 2019, he joined the UNC-Chapel Hill as an assistant professor.
- In May 2020, American Chemical Society Nano published “Optical Sorting at the Single-Particle Level with Single-Nanometer Precision Using Coordinated Intensity and Phase Gradient Forces”, which he co-authored with Nan. In August 2020, Optica published “An Optical Matter Machine: Angular Momentum Conversion by Collective Modes in Optically Bound Nanoparticle Arrays”, which he co-authored with John Parker, Curtis Peterson, Yuval Yifat, Stuart A. Rice, Stephen K. Gray and Norbert F. Scherer.
- In January 2021, Applied Physics Express published “Tunable optical tweezers by dynamically sculpting the phase profiles of light”, which he co-authored with Xionggui Tang and Yanhua Xu.
- In November 2022, Science Advances published “Creating stable trapping force and switchable optical torque with tunable phase of light”, which he co-authored with Nan, Xiao Li, Shuailong Zhang and Jack Ng.
- In July 2023, Advanced Optical Materials published “Optical Binding of Metal Nanoparticles Self‐Reinforced by Plasmonic Surface Lattice Resonances”, which he co-authored with Qi and Nan.
- On August 28, 2023, he was fatally shot at the UNC-Chapel Hill allegedly by Qi.
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