As one of the major driving forces for modern chemistry, advanced materials are currently of great interest to many chemists. This research group is focused on nano-materials, which are a class of very promising advanced materials. Although thousands of papers reported the preparations of various kinds of nano-materials, the relevant fundamental chemistry for their synthesis and manipulation is still the limiting point for many fundamental studies and technical applications. A new generation of solar cells.
Solar energy is the best energy source, in terms of environment and availability.
This research project is developing new, inexpensive, but high performance solar cells by taking advantage of the excellent processibility of inorganic semiconductor nanocrystals and nanostructures. As the very promising labeling reagents for disease diagnostics and other biological recognition, the chemistry of synthesis and manipulation of semiconductor inorganic nanocrystals needs to be systematically studied, because it is the key point for the production at present. For example, a very important issue is to establish chemical methods for the preparation of inorganic nanocrystals with defined number of binding sites for the biological targets. Crystallization is a very common process for materials preparation, characterization and processing. However, the existing theories cannot predict and explain crystallization process systematically.