Guest Speaker: Prof. HOU Xu
College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
College of Physical Science and Technology
Xiamen University, China
Xu Hou completed his Ph.D. (2011) at National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, China and did postdoctoral research at Harvard University (2012-2015). He joined Xiamen University in 2016 as the Principal Investigator of Bioinspired Smart Multi-Scale Pore/Channel Group at Xiamen University. He became a Chief Scientist of National Key R&D Program (Nanoscience) of China in 2018, and an awardee of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2020. His current research focus on liquid-based materials, liquid gating technology, bioinspired nanofluidic iontronics for energy, environmental, biomedical applications. Until now, Xu has published 2 Books as the editor-in-chief and more than 100 research papers such as Nature, Science, Nat. Rev. Mater., Nat. Comm., Sci. Adv., Chem. Soc. Rev., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Adv. Mater., etc. as the first or corresponding author. Due to his outstanding academic research achievements, he was awarded the 9th Chinese Chemical Society & UK Royal Society of Chemistry Young Chemist Award (2023), the XPLORER Prize (2022), the Membranes 2021 Young Investigator Award (2021), the National Scientific Innovation and Advancement Award (2020), Young Investigator Award of Colloid and Interface Chemistry (2019), Chinese Chemical Society Award for Outstanding Young Chemist (2018), etc. and selected into the China Top Ten Emerging Technological Figures (2022). In 2020, his leading research field "liquid gating technology" was selected as the 2020 Top Ten Emerging Technologies in Chemistry by International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).
Abstract
In nature, living organisms make extensive use of liquids as structural materials. For instance, the liquid film on the eyes acts as a smooth refractive surface to allow us to adjust the refractive index of it, and it also employs as a protective barrier to isolate dust and bacteria; the synovial fluid in the knee gap is significantly reducing joint wear during the countless of friction over its lifetime. Inspired by nature, liquid gating mechanism has been proposed, which utilizes the capillary-stabilized functional liquid as a pressure-driven, reversible, and reconfigurable gate to fill and seal the pores in the closed state and create completely liquid-lined pores in the open state under pressure changes. With the design and development of liquid gating systems, liquid gating technology has gradually been established, which has a great impact in the areas of chemical synthesis, multiphase separation, biological analysis, energy storage and conversion, optics and information technology, etc. Recently, it has already become a reality by design of various smart materials by responsive design of the porous solid phase and dynamic liquid phase, which expand the basic scientific issues of the traditional membrane materials from the solid-liquid/gas interface to the solid-liquid-liquid/gas interface and have found applications in chemistry, energy, environmental, and biomedical related interdisciplinary fields.
