报告时间：12月9日周六15:00

报告地点：科技创新大楼C501室

报告人：黄嘉兴

Soft Carbon Sheets: Curiosities, Challenges and Solutions

Abstract: Graphite oxide sheets, now called graphene oxide (GO), are made by exfoliation of graphite using century-old chemical reactions. Interest in this old material has resurged with the rapid development of graphene since 2004, as GO is considered to be a promising precursor for bulk production of graphene. Apart from making graphene, GO itself also has many intriguing properties. For example, GO can be viewed as a two-dimensional (2D) soft material such as polymer, highly anisotropic colloid that can form liquid crystals, membrane, or 2D surfactant.

    In this talk, some curiosity driven discoveries will be shared such as the use of GO as surfactant to process insoluble materials in water. GO sheets are also 2D building blocks to construct massive arrays of 2D nanofluidic channels with high ionic conductivity. Next, a few problems associated with the manufacturing and processing of GO and its graphene product will be discussed, such as the difficulties of imaging these single atomic layers and their ease of aggregation during processing. Strategies and solutions to address these problems will be introduced. Some applications in photovoltaics and energy storage will be discussed.

Keywords: Graphene oxide, surface activity, colloidal surfactant, all-carbon solar cells, fluorescence quenching microscopy (FQM), aggregation-resistant graphene, crumpled graphene balls, nanofluidic ion channels

Biography：Jiaxing Huang is a Full Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University. His main research interest is in the general area of material chemistry, processing and manufacturing. Some of the examples include 2D soft materials, organic nanocrystals and metal nanostructures. He is also interested the application of these materials in energy and sustainability, as well as using them as a platform for materials education. He is a recipient of the IUPAC Young Chemists Prize, the NSF CAREER Award, the Sloan Fellowship, the Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, and the Guggenheim Fellowship. Recently, he has been named by Thompson Reuters as a “Highly Cited Researcher” in Chemistry. 

报告人：SonBinh T. Nguyen

Post-synthesis modification of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) for catalysis and adsorption

Abstract: As hybrid materials derived from well-defined molecular building blocks, newly emerged porous materials such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have many of the desirable features of zeolites, such as high surface area and porosity, and can be similarly effective in applications such as catalysis and adsorption.[1]  However, given the enormous diversity of potential structures and chemical functional groups that can be incorporated into the linkers and nodes of MOFs, these porous materials can be readily modified post-synthesis to engender new properties.  have the potential to extend catalysis far beyond the realm of zeolitic chemistry to include enzyme-like behaviors such as adapted flexibility during catalysis, substrate pre-concentration effects, active-site isolation and protection, and tunable hydrophobicity.[2]  Most importantly, recent developments in MOF synthesis have given rise to catalytically active materials with unprecedented stability, novel activity that were not observed in solution, as well as the abilityto capture multiple chemical species.[3] 

    This presentation will discuss the efforts by our research groups at Northwestern University in trying to design MOFs as platforms for deploying homogeneous catalysts and for adsorption applications.

[3] a) “Vanadium-node-functionalized UiO-66: a thermally stable MOF-supported catalyst for the gas-phase oxidative dehydrogenation of cyclohexene” Nguyen, H. G. T.; Schweitzer, N. M.; Chang, C.-Y.; Drake, T. L.; So, M. C.; Stair, P. C.; Farha, O. K.; Hupp, J. T.; Nguyen, S. T.ACS Catal.2014,4, 2496-2500.  b) "Comparative study of titanium-functionalized UiO-66: Support effect on the oxidation of cyclohexene using hydrogen peroxide" Nguyen, H. G. T.; Mao, L.; Peters, A. W.; Audu, C. O.; Brown, Z. J.; Farha, O. K.; Hupp, J. T.; Nguyen, S. T. Catal. Sci. Technol.2015,5, 4444-4451.  c) “The dual capture of AsVand AsIIIby UiO-66 and analogues”  Audu, C. O.; Nguyen, H. G. T.;Chang, C.-Y.; Katz, M. J.; Mao, L.;Farha, O. K.;Hupp, J. T.;Nguyen, S. T. Chem. Sci.2016,7, 6492-6498.

Biography：SonBinh T. Nguyen received a doctoral degree in Chemistry under the directions of Profs. Robert Grubbs and Nathan Lewis at Caltech, where he was an NSF and an NDSEG predoctoral fellow.  After an NSF postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. K. Barry Sharpless at Scripps, SonBinh began his independent career at Northwestern in 1996, where he is now a Professor of Chemistry.  He is also a Senior Fellow in the technical staff at Argonne National Laboratory.  At Northwestern, he has held the Dow Research Professorship, the highly prestigious McCormick Professorship of Teaching Excellence and the Directorship of the Integrated Science Program. 

    SonBinh’s research was recognized with a PECASE (Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering) Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, as well as young investigator awards from the Dreyfus Foundation, the Beckman Foundation, and the Packard Foundation.  The Union Carbide Corporation gave him its 1999 Innovation Recognition Award, making him one of the youngest recipients of this award.  Nguyen was selected as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in 2000 and appointed to our Dow Research Professorship in 2004.  In 2008, his work was recognized by an Outstanding Research Achievement award from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).  His research has been continuously supported by several DoD agencies such as the AFOSR, the ARO, and DTRA.