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Dr. Wenting Cai

  • Assistant Professor - Chemistry and Biochemistry
Portrait of Dr. Wenting Cai

Biography and education

Wenting Cai obtained her Ph.D. from Huazhong University of Science and Techonology (HUST) in 2015. During her doctoral studies, she was a visiting Ph.D. candidate at Tsukuba University in Japan from 2012 to 2013. After completing her Ph.D., she worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Luis Echegoyen at University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) from 2015 to 2019. She then joined Prof. Ray H. Baughman's research group as a visiting research scholar at University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) from 2019 to 2021. She began her independent academic career at Xi'an Jiaotong University since 2021. Currently, she serves as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Texas State University. Her research interests include the generation and characterization of synthetic carbon allotropes, along with exploring their potential applications in perovskite solar cells, single-molecule magnets, electrocatalysis, mechanical energy harvester and artificial muscles. Her research work has been published in the high-impact journals including Science, Nature Energy, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Acc. Chem. Res., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Chem. Sci. and so on.

Teaching Interests

Research Interests

  • Lin, Y., Lin, Z., Lv, S., Shui, Y., Zhu, W., Zhang, Z., … Liang, C. (2025). A Nd@C82-polymer interface for efficient and stable perovskite solar cells. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08961-9
  • Zhang, M., Fang, S., Cai, W., Huynh, C., Göktepe, F., Oh, J., … Baughman, R. H. (2025). Mandrel-free fabrication of giant spring-index and stroke muscles for diverse applications. Science, 387(6738), 1101–1108. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adr6708
  • Zhang, M., Cai, W., Wang, Z., Fang, S., Zhang, R., Lu, H., … Baughman, R. H. (2023). Mechanical energy harvesters with tensile efficiency of 17.4% and torsional efficiency of 22.4% based on homochirally plied carbon nanotube yarns. Nature Energy, 8(2), 203–213. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01191-7
  • Cai, W., Alvarado, J., Metta-Magaña, A., Chen, N., & Echegoyen, L. (2020). Interconversions between Uranium Mono-metallofullerenes: Mechanistic Implications and Role of Asymmetric Cages. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 142(30), 13112–13119. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.0c04888
  • Cai, W., Abella, L., Zhuang, J., Zhang, X., Feng, L., Wang, Y., … Chen, N. (2018). Synthesis and Characterization of Non-Isolated-Pentagon-Rule Actinide Endohedral Metallofullerenes U@C1(17418)-C76, U@C1(28324)-C80, and Th@C1(28324)-C80: Low-Symmetry Cage Selection Directed by a Tetravalent Ion. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 140(51), 18039–18050. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.8b10435
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