2026 Talented 12: Chaochao Dun

Materials science has spent decades chasing purity—fewer elements, cleaner crystals, and more control. Chaochao Dun’s work runs in the opposite direction. At the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he makes materials by cramming 5, 10, even 25 different elements onto a single crystal lattice.

The materials Dun makes are called high-entropy materials—substances in which five or more elements are mixed into a single crystalline phase, with different atoms sitting at each lattice site. This approach offers an unlimited palette of element combinations to design materials with desired properties. Every cluster of neighboring atoms creates a slightly different chemical environment, giving the material a variety of active reaction sites that no single element can match.

Dun’s materials range from catalysts that efficiently convert carbon dioxide to useful chemical building blocks and electrodes that make batteries and supercapacitors more durable, to materials that readily store and release hydrogen and systems that can withstand extreme environments for use in aerospace and nuclear engineering.

Ordinarily, dissimilar elements refuse to cooperate. Various atomic sizes and electronic properties make them separate into distinct phases, the way oil separates from water. Dun’s method, flame aerosol synthesis, overrides that rule using speed. He sprays metal salts into a flame, where the droplets heat rapidly, and all the elements mix at the atomic level. Then he quenches the flame to freeze them in that mixed state before thermodynamics can pull them apart.

“There are millions of different stars. We spend years exploring whether a star has life or water. In most cases, we fail. But if you find the one that does, it will be a breakthrough,” Dun says. The same is true for designing and synthesizing high-entropy materials: billions of possible element combinations, only a fraction of which will yield the properties that solve a given problem. Dun is now building a platform that uses machine learning to navigate that space faster.

“Chaochao has this boundless willingness to dive into the deep end of the pool and figure out how to swim when he gets there,” says Jeff Urban, his longtime collaborator at the Molecular Foundry. “That is a rare quality. People seek comfort, doing the things they know how to do.”

That willingness was forged long before the lab. Dun grew up in a small farming village near Anyang, China. His parents were farmers. His father had a few years of schooling; his mother never spent a single day in a classroom. “They don’t know what a PhD means,” Dun says. “But they still provide me with all their support to help me achieve what I want to achieve.” He is the first person in his family—and among the first from his village—to attend college.

“Another thing about Chaochao is that he knows how to finish,” Urban says. “The ability to complete things and put a ribbon on it and get that last piece of data is a quality not everyone possesses.” Dun’s publication record bears that fact out, he adds. With 140 papers published to date, Dun has more publications than many associate professors.

Dun’s most difficult challenge was breaking the language barrier. His first job in the US, while doing his PhD at Wake Forest University, was as a teaching assistant. “I knew the science,” he says. “But I’d be nervous when speaking English, so I’d speak very fast and they wouldn’t understand me, making me even more nervous.” His PhD advisers, David L. Caroll and Natalie Holzwarth, broke the cycle, giving him progressively longer slots in group meetings and patiently correcting his words.

Dun is now paying it forward by mentoring postdocs and graduate students. “I want to share confidence with them, along with the knowledge,” he says, confidence in both their ideas and the way they express themselves. He is especially passionate about creating opportunities for students from rural backgrounds, because he knows firsthand the difference good mentors can make.