T Randall Lee
University of Houston, TX·Chemistry
Many technologies depend on what happens at a surface. A coating only a few molecules thick can decide whether bacteria or barnacles stick to a material, whether water beads up or spreads, and whether a metal corrodes.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
self-assembled monolayers
surface chemistry
thin films
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Oct 2026
What they work on
- Design multidentate adsorbates that combine phase-incompatible or structurally dissimilar parts, and test whether they form stable, evenly mixed films that could serve as nanoscale anti-fouling coatings.
- Use multidentate thiol adsorbates that resist detaching as cyclic disulfides to coat the faces of 2D transition metal dichalcogenides such as MoS2, helping exfoliate them and build layer-by-layer hybrid nanostructures for devices.
- Develop selectively fluorinated adsorbates that form coatings with well-controlled composition and shape, and use them to test how surface dipoles affect interfacial properties such as wettability.
- Custom-design adsorbates that form thin films mimicking polymer interfaces but cannot undergo surface reconstruction, the molecular rearrangement that real polymer surfaces show.
More about the research
This research designs new molecules that attach to surfaces and pack into ultrathin films, called adsorbates. It studies how their structure controls surface properties and tests the resulting coatings for real uses. These uses include anti-fouling layers for biomedical implants, oil pipelines and marine structures, protective and patterning coatings for electrodes and superconducting tapes, and large-scale coatings that control wetting and prevent corrosion.
Why it matters
Fouling, corrosion and uncontrolled wetting cause problems for medical implants, oil pipelines, ships and marine structures, and electronic components. Molecular-level design rules for thin protective coatings could lead to more durable anti-fouling and anti-corrosion surfaces. They could also lead to better-protected electrodes and superconducting tapes, and new layered nanostructures for optical and electronic devices.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Saien Xie
Princeton University, NJ·Materials Science·Early-career
Determine how thermodynamic and kinetic factors govern the formation of epitaxial interfaces, crystal-aligned boundaries, between two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides with controlled composition and structure at nanometer length scales.
Ding-Shyue Yang
University of Houston, TX·Chemistry
Use ultrafast electron diffraction to directly image laser-induced molecular motions at sub-Angstrom scale in nanoscale molecular films on solid substrates.
David Lynn
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Chemistry
Design drug-patterned 'proto-SLIPS', porous polymer coatings spotted with a water-soluble antibiotic and then infused with oil, that release the drug to reduce biofouling and bacterial load.
The school
University of Houston: 21 labs on PI Pages, $239M a year on research, 374 research doctorates a year.
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