About

Jiangtao Cheng is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, where he has been serving since 2015. His research interests include optofluidic solar concentrators driven by electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD), micro- and nano-scale fluid flow near-field characterization, dropwise condensation on superhydrophobic surfaces, thin film evaporation in hybrid micro- and nanostructures, liquid-based high-frequency components, nanoparticle self-assembly, nanophotonics, microfluidics, nanofluidics, electrofluidics, and sustainable and renewable energy systems. His work encompasses thermal-fluid sciences, heat transfer, thermal management, microelectronics cooling, surface plasmon resonance, and terahertz technology. Dr. Cheng has contributed to advancing bio-inspired engineering and clean energy solutions through his research. He has received numerous awards and honors, including being named a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 2021 and receiving the ACS Petroleum Research Foundation New Directions Award in 2026. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Physics from Purdue University and a B.S. in Applied Physics from Peking University.

Research topics

• Organic chemistry
• Combinatorial chemistry
• Chemistry
• Medicinal chemistry
• Optics
• Nanotechnology
• Materials science
• Optoelectronics

Selected publications

• Construction of Tetrasubstituted α‐Amino‐ and α‐Alkoxy Phosphine Oxides via Pd‐Catalyzed Regio‐ and Enantioselective Hydrophosphinylation of Dienes

  Angewandte Chemie · 2025-10-22 · 1 citations

  article1st author

  Abstract Significant progress has been made in the asymmetric hydrofunctionalization of dienes to construct vinylic stereogenic carbon centers. However, achieving enantioselective hydrofunctionalization of substituted dienes with heteroatom nucleophiles to form vinylic tetrasubstituted carbon centers remains a formidable challenge. This difficulty arises primarily from issues of regio‐control, steric hindrance, and stereo‐discrimination. In this study, we present a palladium‐catalyzed regio‐ and enantioselective hydrophosphinylation of 2‐amido and 2‐alkoxyl dienes using phosphine oxides. This approach successfully constructs chiral allylic α‐aminophosphine oxides and α‐alkoxyphosphine oxides with tetrasubstituted carbon centers. Our method demonstrates a broad substrate scope with excellent enantioselectivity (up to > 99% ee) and high yields (up to 99%), achieving exclusive regio‐control under mild conditions. Additionally, the versatile post‐functionalization of the allyl group facilitates the synthesis of a wide variety of tetrasubstituted carbon centers featuring distinct heteroatom.

  PublisherDOI

• Construction of Tetrasubstituted α‐Amino‐ and α‐Alkoxy Phosphine Oxides via Pd‐Catalyzed Regio‐ and Enantioselective Hydrophosphinylation of Dienes

  Angewandte Chemie International Edition · 2025-10-22 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  Significant progress has been made in the asymmetric hydrofunctionalization of dienes to construct vinylic stereogenic carbon centers. However, achieving enantioselective hydrofunctionalization of substituted dienes with heteroatom nucleophiles to form vinylic tetrasubstituted carbon centers remains a formidable challenge. This difficulty arises primarily from issues of regio-control, steric hindrance, and stereo-discrimination. In this study, we present a palladium-catalyzed regio- and enantioselective hydrophosphinylation of 2-amido and 2-alkoxyl dienes using phosphine oxides. This approach successfully constructs chiral allylic α-aminophosphine oxides and α-alkoxyphosphine oxides with tetrasubstituted carbon centers. Our method demonstrates a broad substrate scope with excellent enantioselectivity (up to > 99% ee) and high yields (up to 99%), achieving exclusive regio-control under mild conditions. Additionally, the versatile post-functionalization of the allyl group facilitates the synthesis of a wide variety of tetrasubstituted carbon centers featuring distinct heteroatom.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Enantioselective Zn-catalyzed hydrophosphinylation of nitrones: an efficient approach for constructing chiral α-hydroxyamino-phosphine oxides

  Chemical Science · 2025-01-01 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access

  Although enantioselective hydrofunctionalizations of nitrones are established for the synthesis of various types of chiral hydroxylamines, the asymmetric catalytic hydrophosphinylation of nitrones remains highly challenging. Herein, an efficient asymmetric hydrophosphinylation of nitrones, catalyzed by the dinuclear zinc catalyst derived from ProPhenol, is presented, accommodating a variety of nitrones and phosphine oxides. This approach successfully addresses the long-standing challenge of catalytic hydrophosphinylation of the C[double bond, length as m-dash]N bond, and offers an efficient and rapid access towards chiral α-hydroxyamino-phosphine oxides. Control experiments suggest that the oxide anion in the nitrone motif is crucial for the enantio-control.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Airborne Acoustic Vortex End Effector‐Based Contactless, Multi‐Mode, Programmable Control of Object Surfing (Adv. Mater. Technol. 18/2024)

  Advanced Materials Technologies · 2024-09-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Acoustic Tweezers In article number 2400564, Jiangtao Cheng, Y. Albert Pan, Zhenhua Tian, and co-workers present robot-assisted airborne acoustic vortex tweezers that enable contactless, multi-mode, programmable object manipulation. These capabilities include trapping, repelling, and spinning particles, translating particles along complex paths, guiding particles around barriers, and translating and rotating droplets containing zebrafish larvae.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Simulation and Evaluation of HVIGBT Type 1 Short Circuit Behavior Based on Hefner Model

  2024-05-17

  articleSenior author

  For the type 1 short circuit behavior modeling of high voltage IGBT, Hefner model cannot effectively deal with the problems of high voltage level and current rise. In this paper, improved Hefner model for high voltage IGBT short circuit and frequency domain evaluation method based on discrete Fourier transform are established. Finally, short circuit models of $3.3 \mathrm{kV} / 500 \mathrm{~A}$ IGBT are established in the experiment. The validity of models are evaluated by comparing the short circuit voltage and current waveform indexes $\boldsymbol{P}$ of Hefner model and improved Hefner model by frequency domain evaluation method. Experiments show that frequency domain evaluation method quantifies the effectiveness of the models, and verifies that improved Hefner model has better simulation effect on improving the electrical characteristics of short circuit compared with Hefner model.

  PublisherDOI

• Robot-assisted chirality-tunable acoustic vortex tweezers for contactless, multifunctional, 4-DOF object manipulation

  Science Advances · 2024-05-24 · 26 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Robotic manipulation of small objects has shown great potential for engineering, biology, and chemistry research. However, existing robotic platforms have difficulty in achieving contactless, high-resolution, 4-degrees-of-freedom (4-DOF) manipulation of small objects, and noninvasive maneuvering of objects in regions shielded by tissue and bone barriers. Here, we present chirality-tunable acoustic vortex tweezers that can tune acoustic vortex chirality, transmit through biological barriers, trap single micro- to millimeter-sized objects, and control object rotation. Assisted by programmable robots, our acoustic systems further enable contactless, high-resolution translation of single objects. Our systems were demonstrated by tuning acoustic vortex chirality, controlling object rotation, and translating objects along arbitrary-shaped paths. Moreover, we used our systems to trap single objects in regions with tissue and skull barriers and translate an object inside a Y-shaped channel of a thick biomimetic phantom. In addition, we showed the function of ultrasound imaging-assisted acoustic manipulation by monitoring acoustic object manipulation via live ultrasound imaging.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Low-temperature Leidenfrost-like jumping of sessile droplets on microstructured surfaces

  Nature Physics · 2024-05-24 · 35 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Airborne Acoustic Vortex End Effector‐Based Contactless, Multi‐Mode, Programmable Control of Object Surfing

  Advanced Materials Technologies · 2024-06-22 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Tweezers based on optical, electric, magnetic, and acoustic fields have shown great potential for contactless object manipulation. However, current tweezers designed for manipulating millimeter-sized objects such as droplets, particles, and small animals, exhibit limitations in translation resolution, range, and path complexity. Here, we introduce a novel acoustic vortex tweezers system, which leverages a unique airborne acoustic vortex end effector integrated with a three degree-of-freedom (DoF) linear motion stage, for enabling contactless, multi-mode, programmable manipulation of millimeter-sized objects. The acoustic vortex end effector utilizes a cascaded circular acoustic array, which is portable and battery-powered, to generate an acoustic vortex with a ring-shaped energy pattern. The vortex applies acoustic radiation forces to trap and spin an object at its center, simultaneously protecting this object by repelling other materials away with its high-energy ring. Moreover, our vortex tweezers system facilitates contactless, multi-mode, programmable object surfing, as demonstrated in experiments involving trapping, repelling, and spinning particles, translating particles along complex paths, guiding particles around barriers, translating and rotating droplets containing zebrafish larvae, and merging droplets. With these capabilities, we anticipate that our tweezers system will become a valuable tool for the automated, contactless handling of droplets, particles, and bio-samples in biomedical and biochemical research.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Improved HVIGBT Transient Modeling Method Based on Hefner Model

  2023-12-28

  articleSenior author

  Aiming at HVIGBTs with high voltage ratings and large on-state currents, which cannot be effectively dealt with by the modeling method of LVIGBT, this paper proposes an improved transient modeling method of HVIGBT based on the Hefner model. Starting from the IGBT structure and Hefner mechanism model, this paper splits the modeling process into two parts: MOSFET and BJT, and at the same time establishes and simplifies the diffusion equation of the carriers in the base region inside the BJT part to form the transient model of HVIGBT. Finally, the parameters are extracted and modeled for the model FF400R33KF2C IGBT, and the transient waveforms of the experiment and simulation are obtained under different working conditions, so as to summarize the model parameter laws and finally verify the validity of the model.

  PublisherDOI

• Modulating Leidenfrost-like Prompt Jumping of Sessile Droplets on Microstructured Surfaces

  Research Square · 2023-11-09

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  <title>Abstract</title> The Leidenfrost effect, namely the levitation and hovering of liquid drops on hot solid surfaces, generally requires a sufficiently high substrate temperature to activate the intense liquid vaporization. Here we report the agile modulations of Leidenfrost-like prompt jumping of sessile water microdroplets on micropillared surfaces at a remarkably mitigated temperature. Compared to traditional Leidenfrost effect occurring above 230 °C, the fin-array-like micropillars enables Wenzel-state water microdroplets to levitate and jump off within 1.33 ms at an unprecedently low temperature of 130 °C by triggering the inertia-controlled growth of individual vapor bubbles at the droplet base. We demonstrate that droplet jumping, resulting from the momentum interactions between the expanding vapor bubble and the droplet, can be deftly modulated by simply tailoring the thermal boundary layer thickness via pillar heights, which acts to regulate the bubble expansion between the inertia-controlled mode and the heat-transfer-limited mode. Intriguingly, the two bubble growth modes give rise to distinct droplet jumping behaviors characterized by constant velocity and constant energy schemes, respectively. This heating strategy allows the facile purging of wetting liquid drops on rough or structured surfaces in a controlled manner, inspiring promising applications in rapid removal of fouling even settled in surface cavities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Electrowetting-Tuned Liquid Droplets on Lubricated Superhydrophobic Surfaces for Whispering-Gallery-Mode Sensing

  NSF · $364k · 2018–2023

• EAGER: Collaborative Research: Liquid-Based Intelligent High-Frequency Components

  NSF · $90k · 2015–2017

• EAGER: Unravelling the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Three-Phase Contact Line on Soft Surfaces by Transmission X-Ray Microscopy

  NSF · $180k · 2021–2024

• UNS: Experimental and Theoretical Investigation of Thin Film Evaporation in Superhydrophobic-Superhydrophilic Hybrid Micro\Nanotextures

  NSF · $272k · 2015–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Zheng Zheng

  Guang’anmen Hospital

  17 shared

• Xin‐Yuan Liu

  North China Electric Power University

  15 shared

• Jiansheng Liu

  Nanchang University

  13 shared

• Xukun He

  Virginia Tech

  11 shared

• Jin‐Shun Lin

  Tsinghua–Berkeley Shenzhen Institute

  10 shared

• Lei Zhao

  AAC Technologies (China)

  10 shared

• Xinpeng Han

  Tianjin University

  10 shared

• Chung-Lung Chen

  University of Missouri

  9 shared

Education

• PhD, Physics

  Purdue University

  2002

• MS, Computer Science

  Purdue University

  1997

• BS, Applied Physics

  Peking University

  1991

Awards & honors

• IOP Physics World Editor’s Choice: A bursting bubble can mak…
• American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Foundatio…
• MGI Scaling Scholarship of College of Engineering of Virgini…
• Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME…
• Virginia Tech Link+Licence+Launch Faculty Inventor Spotlight…