Professor Lain-Jong (Lance) Li received his BSc and MSc in chemistry at National Taiwan University. He obtained his PhD of condensed matter physics at Oxford University in 2006 with the support of Swire Scholarship. He then joined Nanyang Technological University Singapore as an Assistant Professor from 2006 to 2009. Since 2010, he has become an Associate Professor at Academia Sinica Taiwan. He joined King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in 2014 and became a Full Professor in 2016. He then took the Director position in Corporate Research at the most advanced foundry company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company(TSMC), from 2017-2020. He formally joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering as a Chair Professor in nanomaterials for future electronics in March of 2021.
Lance took an important role in the research of two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD) for electronics. In 2012, Lance has first demonstrated how to grow large-area and single-crystal 2D TMD monolayer such as MoS2 using simple chemical vapor deposition (CVD). His team also revealed the fundamental approach, atomic edge epitaxy, to grow single-crystal 2D materials in a wafer scale. After joining TSMC, he led a team to explore the possibilities of replacing Si transistors with a few promising 2D materials for manufacturing compact and low-energy-consuming nanodevices. Noteworthy that the major bottlenecks that prevent their integration with micro/nanoelectronics technologies are the lack of (1) reproducible approach for growing wafer-scale single-crystalline and low-defect-density 2D layers, (2) reliable layer transfer method which does not induce defects, and (3) systematic exploration of appropriate process integration. His research is primarily focusing on solving these grand challenges for extending the Moore’s Law and realizing high-performance future electronics.
