After his PhD, he worked as a research scientist at the Max-Planck-Institute for Iron Research (MPIE) in Germany, in the field of high temperature corrosion. He returned to UNSW in 2003, continuing his research in high temperature corrosion with one of the world-leading groups in this field. His research focus is on high temperature corrosion caused by complicated gas-solid reactions, in particular materials oxidation and carburisation, including thermodynamic and kinetic analyses, alloy diffusion, product characterisation, mechanistic analysis, and corrosion prevention. He and his team have received ongoing support from the ARC in the form of Discovery and Linkage grants and published extensively. A/Prof Zhang was an ARC Australian Research Fellow (2006-2010) and President of the Australasia Corrosion Association (2013-2015).