On 24 June, a mini-symposium on solution processable materials and devices was held in IAPME. Organized by Prof. Handong Sun, the symposium garnered three distinguished scientists from ETH Zürich (Maksym V. Kovalenko and Maryna I. Bodnarchuk) and the City University of Hong Kong (Andrey L. Rogach) to deliver seminars. Meanwhile three professors (Guichuan Xing, Songnan Qu and Shuangpeng Wang) from IAPME showcased their recent research findings during the symposium.
Prof. Maksym V. Kovalenko studied chemistry at the Chernivtsi National University in Ukraine and completed his doctoral studies at the University of Linz, Austria. He then had postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago, USA (2008-2011). Currently, he serves as the head of the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry. He is also an Associate editor of the Chemistry of Materials and ACS Materials Au. The research activities of Prof. Kovalenko and his group focus on chemistry, physics and applications of inorganic solid-state materials and nanostructures.
During the talk, Prof. Kovalenko first introduced the discovery of colloidal perovskite quantum dots. He then presented the interesting physical and chemistry properties of the novel materials. He also demonstrated the fascillating applications of those materials as classical and quantum light emitters.
Dr. Maryna I. Bodnarchuk received her PhD degree in natural sciences from the Johannes Kepler University Linz (Austria) in 2009. She then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago. In 2011 she joined the Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry of ETH Zürich as a Marie Heim-Vögtlin fellow and then as an Ambizione Energy fellow (junior PI) supported by SNSF. In 2016, she was appointed as group leader in the laboratory of Thin Films and Photovoltaics at Empa. During her talk, Dr. Bodnarchuk introduced self-assembly and characterization of novel inorganic nanostructures. These mesostructures exhibit superfluorescence, characterized by high excitation density, by emission pulses with ultrafast radiative decay. The presentation futher extended to the most recent work, wherein nano crystals (NCs) are co-assembled with molecular entities or plasmonic NCs.
Andrey L. Rogach is a Yeung Kin Man Chair Professor in Photonics Materials at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the Founding Director of the Centre for Functional Photonics (CFP) at City University of Hong Kong. He received his Diploma in Chemistry (1991, with honors) and Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry (1995) from the Belarusian State University in Minsk. From 2002–2009 he held a tenured position of a lead staff scientist at the Department of Physics and Centre for NanoScience of the University of Munich, Germany, where he completed his habilitation. He joined City University of Hong Kong as a Full Professor in 2009 and has been advanced to Chair Professor in 2012. During his talk, Prof. Rogach shared his research findings regarding the the synthesis and characterization of core-shell metal halide perovskite nanocrystals. He further domonstrated the application of lead-free CsSnI3 perovskites for efficient and rather stable near-infrared LEDs.
