[ISD Seminar] Functional Metal-Based Nanomaterials from Metallopolymers

Metal-containing polymers represent an important research field due to their combination of unique and intriguing redox, electronic, magnetic, optical, and catalytic properties and their ability to be easily processed and fabricated into thin films, fibers, and other forms. As these metallopolymers can be readily shaped and patterned using various lithographic techniques, they offer a convenient synthetic access to patterned arrays of metal NPs with control of their composition and density per unit area. In the first part of this talk, the advances in developing new functional organometallic polymers as precursors to magnetic metal alloy nanoparticles and their lithographic patterning studies will be presented. These metallated polymers (both main-chain and side-chain polymers) are promising as building blocks in realizing high-density magnetic data storage media where the convenient and rapid patterning of magnetic NPs is highly desirable. On the other hand, 2D nanosheet materials have attracted significant attention because of their unique electronic and physical properties, which derive from their 2D nature. Most of these nanosheets have been synthesized via exfoliation of bulk layered materials, which is a top-down method. In contrast, “bottom-up” nanosheets are generally synthesized directly from organic compounds, ligands, and/or metal ion connectors, and their composition, structure, and properties can be tuned at will by tailoring the constituent components used. This is a strong point of using bottom-up nanosheet against the top-down congener. The bottom-up synthesis of some functional 2D metallopolymers (nanosheets) from molecular precursors will also be presented in this talk and the resulting metal-complex nanosheets are also shown to find wide applications in optoelectronics and catalysis.

Speaker’s biography:

Prof. Wai-Yeung Wong (Raymond) obtained his B.Sc. (Hons.) and Ph.D. degrees from The University of Hong Kong. After postdoctoral works at Texas A&M University (Advisor: Prof. F. A. Cotton) and the University of Cambridge (Advisors: Profs. The Lord Lewis and P. R. Raithby), he joined Hong Kong Baptist University from 1998 to 2016 and he now works at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University as the Dean of Faculty of Science and Chair Professor of Chemical Technology. He was awarded the RSC Chemistry of the Transition Metals Award, FACS Distinguished Young Chemist Award, State Natural Science Award from China, Croucher Senior Research Fellowship and RGC Senior Research Fellow Award, among others. His research focuses on organometallic and materials chemistry, especially aiming at developing multifunctional molecules and polymers for organic optoelectronics, energy science and metal-based nanomaterials. He has served as the Associate Editor for the Journal of Materials Chemistry C from 2013 to 2022. He is currently the Chairman of Hong Kong Chemical Society and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2023, he was elected as the Foreign Member of the European Academy of Sciences.