Recently, Professor Meng Gu (Department of Materials Science and Engineering), cooperated with Professor Lang Chen (Department of Physics) at SUSTech and Professor Xueliang Sun at the University of Western Ontario, made a series of research progress in alkali metal-air nanobatteries. Relative results were published by Angewandte Chemie International Edition, ACS Nano, and Energy Storage Materials.

Recently, the Shenzhen Institute for GU’s lab at Southern University of Science and Technology has made significant experimental progress in oxygen evolution reaction. The research team mainly includes Dr. Chao Cai and Dr. Shaobo Han, students of Prof. Gu, Maoyu Wang, student of Prof. Zhenxing Feng (Organ State University), Meng Gu, Professor of the Institute, and their cooperator, Prof. Feng.

The development of organic and perovskite solar cells has seen significant advances in materials innovation, power conversion efficiencies (PCEs), and device stability. With that in mind, the researchers in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) have made continuous efforts for significant progress in this field.

As a common feature in a majority of malignant tumors, hypoxia has become the Achilles’ heel of photodynamic therapy (PDT). The development of type-I photosensitizers that show hypoxia tolerance PDT efficiency provides a straightforward way to address this issue.

Despite vibrant innovations in bioelectronic devices and their ever advanced applications, integrating bioelectronic devices to the human body still relies on century-old conventional methods such as surgical suturing or physical attachment.

Recently, a research team led by Professor Yonghong Deng (Materials Science and Engineering, SUSTech) propose a viable pathway of realizing high-energy-density and high-stability lithium metal batteries by adopting self-organized core-shell composite anodes. The cutting-edge findings were published in Advance Materials (IF = 27.3), entitled “500 Wh/Kg Class Li Metal Battery Enabled by Self-Organized Core-Shell Composite Anode”.

Quantum relaxation time (τ) is one of the most important physical properties affecting critical electron transport parameters in advanced materials, such as electrical conductivity and carrier mobility in metals and semiconductors.

Developments in thermoelectric energy harvesting techniques have tended to focus on the materials themselves. Many of those developments are centered on simplistic assumptions of the materials or determining thermal exchanges between different parts of the devices. Very few studies have thought to assess those assumptions to improve the efficiency of devices or the fundamentals behind thermoelectric system-level optimization.

On September 14, a research team led by Associate Professor Guixin Li (Materials Science and Engineering) and the Université de Bordeaux Professor Etienne Brasselet published cutting-edge research findings. Their findings provide a novel scheme for generating spin-orbit angular momentum of nonlinear optical waves through a cascade process. Their paper, titled “Harmonic spin-orbit angular momentum cascade in nonlinear optical crystals,” was published in the high-impact academic journal, Nature Photonics (IF = 31.5).

On August 20, Professor Xugang GUO (Materials Science and Engineering) published a Comment in the high-impact academic journal, Nature Materials (IF = 38.663), with the Chief Technology Officer Dr. Antonio Facchetti in Flexterra, Inc. Their Comment, titled “The journey of conducting polymers from discovery to application,” examined the progress of conducting polymers over the 20 years since the groundbreaking accomplishments of Shirakawa, MacDiarmid, and Heeger in 1977. Nature Materials published an Editorial on this topic titled “Conducting polymers forward.”