Speaker: Yanglong Hou
Place: Conference Room 502, Building Chao Kuang Piu, School of Materials Science & Engineering
Title: Fabrication and Potential Applications of Magnetic Nanomaterials
Time: 9th May, 2019, 15:30-16:30 p.m.
Inviter: Tiejun Zhu
Abstract:
Nature-branded journals continue to strive to publish the most significant advances in research on various topics. We are on the lookout for novel findings whose importance can be appreciated not only by specialists in the field, but also by a broader audience of scientists in the related disciplines. In this talk I will endeavour to shed light on how editors at Nature journals particularly Nature Communications apply the editorial criteria in practice, and determine which few of the many excellent research submissions make it through to publication. This talk will also involve personal views on the current trends in scholarly publishing whose landscape is undergoing unprecedented changes, particularly given that the recent launch of ‘Plan S'by European Commission is pushing forward the transition to full and immediate open access to research publications.
Biography:
Yaoqing Zhang is a Senior Editor at Nature Communications, where he handles a wide swath of manuscripts spanning the areas of energy research, with a particular focus on solid state ionics and electrochemical energy storage. Prior to that, he spent a few years in Japan working on inorganic solids with exotic physics and chemistry, and even further back in the mists of time, he received training as a solid state chemist in the UK for a PhD degree. Dr Zhang is based in the Shanghai office, and outside the area of his editorial responsibility, he is a fan of crystallography, superconductivity and high pressure chemistry.
Magnetic nanomaterials (MNMs) have attracted significant interest in the past few decades due to their unique properties such as superparamagnetism, which results from the influence of thermal energy on a ferromagnetic nanoparticle. To understand the fundamental behavior of nanomagnetism and develop relevant potential applications, various preparation routes have been explored to produce MNMs with desired properties and structures, among which chemical synthesis, especially high-temperature organic-phase method, play an indispensable role in which the microstructures and physical/chemical properties of MNMs can be tuned by controlling the reaction conditions such as precursor, surfactant, or solvent amounts, reaction temperature or time, reaction atmosphere, etc. In this talk, we first introduce the fundamental of high-temperature organic-phase method, and present the progress on the synthesis of plenty of MNMs, including monocomponent nanostructures (like metals, metal alloys, metal oxides/carbides) and multicomponent nanostructures (heterostructures and exchange-coupled nanomagnets). Considering the latter type not only retain the functionalities from each single component, but also possess synergistic properties that emerge from interfacial coupling, with improved magnetic, optical or catalytic features, and therefore, we will discuss the potential applications of MNMs in biomedicine and catalysis. For an instance, Fe5C2, one kind of representative iron carbide, have shown infinite possibilities. It showed intrinsic catalytic properties during Fischer−Tropsch synthesis, no matter in efficiency and selectivity. On the other hand, through modification of affinity proteins (ZHER2:342), Fe5C2 NPs can selectively bind to HER2 overexpressing cancer cells. T2-weighted MRI and PAT signals are readily observed, and tumors are effectively ablated by PTT under NIR irradiation. To enhance cancer therapeutic efficiency, anticancer drug doxorubicin is loaded into bovine serum albumin coated Fe5C2 NPs, combining PTT with chemotherapy. Such nanoplatform can respond to NIR and acidic environments, and exhibit burst drug release. In summary, we overview the rational design, fabrications of magnetic nanomaterials, this kind of materials give great application potential in biomedicine and nanocatalysis.
