Jingbo Li is a Research Associate in the Computational Materials Science Group at NREL. He received his Ph.D. in Physics in 2001 from the Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China. Under the supervision of Prof. Jian-Bia Xia, he studied electronic structure and optical properties of semiconductor nanocrystals. In October 2001 he became a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and collaborated with Dr. Lin Wang Wang. During 2001-2004, he worked closely with Prof. A.P. Alivisatos and W.E. Buhro's groups comparing theoretical simulations with experimental results. He deployed both semi-empirical and ab initio methods. The semi-empirical method can be used to calculate inorganic nanocrystals containing thousands of atoms. These calculations can give the single particle wave functions and eigen energies, density of states and absorption spectra. Together with Lin Wang they developed the charge patching method with LDA-quality results for a large nano-system also containing more than 1000 atoms. A hybrid approach between these two methods allows one to study large structures composed of both inorganic and organic compounds, such as bio-molecules. This charge patching method can also be used to study the impurity system or semiconductor alloys with large supercells. His current research interests are:

1. Overcoming doping bottlenecks in semiconductors;
2. Electronic structure and stability of ordered semiconductors;
3. Shape effects on semiconductor nanocrystals;
4. Electronic structure of nanocrystal heterostructures, such as core/shell quantum dots.

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