Plenary Talk – 4

 

Advanced materials for multiple applications

 

Zikang Tang

 

Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering, University of Macau, Macao SAR

 

Advanced materials with various novel strategies surely become the pillar materials for sustainable green energy harvesting/storage, environmental governance, and health in the future. As we are facing ever-increasing challenging issues, such as energy crisis, environmental pollution, healthy problems, and national safety, the study on advanced materials becomes more and more important. In the talk, I shall talk about the recent development of advanced materials for their particular applications into following five areas: (1) Photoelectric/Electro-optical High Efficiency Conversion, (2) Energy Storage and Catalysis Energy Saving, (3) Environmental and construction applications, (4) Quantum Information and Micro-nano Technology, and (5) Quantum Biomedical Technology.

   

About the Speaker

 

Professor Zikang TANG received his BSc. in Physics from Zhejiang University, PhD from Tohoku University (Japan), and joined Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 1994, where he developed his career starting from assistant professor to full professor until the end of 2015. In Jan. 2016, he moved to University of Macau, starting to establish the Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering (IAPME), and served as a Chair Professor and the founding director of the institute.

In 2000, Prof. Tang developed a unique template technique, and produced the world-record small single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with a diameter only 0.4 nm, and in 2001, Prof. Tang observed novel low-dimensional superconducting phenomena from the well-arrayed ultra-small SWNTs. Prof. Tang is also the recipient of the Award for Outstanding Oversee Chinese Youth Fellowship (2004), Chang Jiang Scholar Professor (2005), Croucher Senior Research Fellowship Award (2007), and Thousand Talent Scheme Professor awarded from the Central People’s Government of China (2010).

Prof. Tang is certainly a renowned nano materials scientist. In 1998, he discovered ultraviolet lasing phenomena at room temperature from nano-structured ZnO thin films. This discovery triggered a worldwide booming in ZnO research. His pioneer research paper published in Applied Physics Letters (1998) was selected as one of the Top 50 of the Most Cited Papers in the Past 50 Years of Applied Physics Letters in the APL’s 50^th Anniversary Celebration in 2012. In 2000, Prof. Tang developed a unique technique to produce mono-sized, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), and fabricated the world-record small SWNTs with a diameter of only 0.4 nm, constituting an almost ideal one-dimensional electronic system. The SWNTs are periodically arrayed in the nano channels of zeolite single crystals. This research work was well received worldwide. It was selected as Top 10 World Scientific News in 2000 by 485 Chinese Academicians and was highlighted by Chem. Engin. News (USA) in 2000 as one of the four most important research achievements in the field of nano materials. In 2001, Prof. Tang observed novel low-dimensional superconducting phenomena at a low temperature from these well-arrayed ultra-small SWNTs. This new observation was published in Science in 2001 and was highlighted by the physics web (http://physicsweb.org) as one of the 11 most important research achievements in 2001 in physics. Prof. Tang is the recipient of the Natural Science Award (2000, Chinese Ministry of Education), State Natural Science Award (2003, China), Outstanding Oversee Chinese Youth Fellowship Award (2004, China), Croucher Senior Research Fellowship Award (2007, Hong Kong, China), Guanghua Engineering Technology Award (2020, Chinese Academy of Engineering), and Science and Technology Awards (2022, Macao, China). He has published more than 590 research papers, with a citation frequency of over 20323 times together with a h-index 63, in prestigious international journals.