Dr.
Zhang’s research interests focus on phase engineering of nanomaterials (PEN)
and controlled epitaxial growth of heterostructures, including the synthesis of
ultrathin two-dimensional nanomaterials (e.g., metal nanosheets, graphene,
metal dichalcogenides, metal-organic frameworks, covalent organic frameworks,
etc.), novel metallic and semiconducting nanomaterials, novel amorphous
nanomaterials, and their hybrid composites for various applications, such as
catalysis, clean energy, (opto-)electronic devices, chemical and biosensors,
and water remediation.
Dr. Zhang obtained his Ph.D. degree from Peking University in 1998 under the supervision of Academician Liu Zhongfan. In 2006, he joined the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, as an Assistant Professor. He was subsequently promoted to Associate Professor and then to Professor in 2011 and 2013, respectively.
In 2019, Dr. Zhang joined the Department of Chemistry at City University of Hong Kong as the Hu Xiaoming Endowed Chair Professor in Nanomaterials and the Director of the Hong Kong Institute for Clean Energy. Throughout his career, Dr. Zhang has made significant contributions to the field of materials science, with over 500 academic publications, including articles published in prestigious journals such as Nature and Science. His work has been highly cited, with more than 129,800 citations according to Web of Science (H-index: 178) and over 146,600 citations according to Google Scholar (H-index: 188).
Phase
Engineering of Nanomaterials (PEN)
In this talk, I will summarize the recent research on
phase engineering of nanomaterials (PEN) in my group, particularly focusing on
the rational design and synthesis of novel nanomaterials with unconventional
phases for various promising applications. For example, by using wet-chemical
methods, for the first time, we have successfully prepared novel Au
nanostructures (e.g., the
hexagonal-close packed (hcp) 2H-Au
nanosheets, 4H-Au nanoribbons, and crystal-phase heterostructured 4H/fcc and fcc/2H/fcc heterophase Au
nanorods), epitaxially grown metal nanostructures on the aforementioned
unconventional Au nanostructures and 2H-Pd nanoparticles, and
amorphous/crystalline heterophase Pd, PdCu, Rh and Rh alloy nanosheets. By using gas-solid reactions,
metastable 1T'-phase group VI transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), e.g., WS2, WSe2,
MoS2, MoSe2, WS2xSe2(1-x) and MoS2xSe2(1-x), have been prepared. Impressively, the 1T'-MoS2-supported single-atomically dispersed Pt (s-Pt) atoms with Pt
loading up to 10 wt% exhibit superior performance in hydrogen evolution
reaction. Importantly, 1T'-TMD monolayers can be
stabilized on 4H-Au nanowires, which can be used for ultrasensitive SERS
detection Moreover, the salt-assisted 2H-to-1T' phase transformation of TMDs have been achieved, and the phase
transformation of TMDs during our developed electrochemical Li-intercalation process has been
observed. Impressively, the lithiation-induced amorphization of Pd3P2S8 has been achieved.
Currently, my group focuses on the investigation of phase-dependent
physicochemical properties and applications in catalysis, (opto-)electronic devices, clean energy, chemical and
biosensors, surface enhanced Raman scattering, photothermal therapy, etc., which we believe is quite unique
and very important not only in fundamental studies, but also in future
practical applications. Importantly, the concepts of phase engineering of
nanomaterials (PEN), crystal-phase heterostructures, and heterophase nanomaterials
are proposed.
