As the leading industry of national economy, the development of new materials is an important guarantee for high-end manufacturing and defense-related industry, and has become the focus of strategic competition among countries. Recent years, China has attached great importance to the development of new materials industry and issued a series of documents such as the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for Scientific and Technological Innovation in the Material Field” and “Made in China 2025”, to promote the rapid development of the new material industry. Chemistry is the core science to overcome the “being hit in the throat” problem of high performance materials, in which the collaborative innovation of chemical theory and chemical synthesis is the key factor to make breakthroughs in material properties.

Based in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, facing the major demand for high-end materials in the main economic and social battlefield in South China, with the support of province departmental high-level scientific research platform like “Key Laboratory of Environmental Theoretical Chemistry of Ministry of Education” and “Guangdong Provincial Engineering Technology Research Center for Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage”, the materials chemistry major of College of Chemistry, which is an interdisciplinary that is based on long-term accumulation and development of the chemistry, chemical engineering, materials, is designed to solve the problems of developing "high performance", "multi-function", "intelligent" and other aspects of materials. After 10 years of efforts, in areas like theoretical chemistry, polymer materials, fine chemicals, synthetic chemistry, especially “photochemical functional materials and applications” we have gradually formed our own characteristics and advantages over the worldwide. Moreover, in talent training, academic exchanges, “production-learning-research”, etc., we also have made important contributions. The main field of “Photochemical Functional Materials and Applications”, which is based on photochemistry, guided by photochemical conversion and photofunctional materials, carries out basic and applied basic research of photochemistry in solar green energy utilization, information display, life science, environmental monitoring and pollution control, and so on.

The main research fields of "Photochemical Functional Materials and Applications" are as follows:

1, Photochemistry and Theoretical Calculations

 Develop photochemical theories and photochemical reactions for degradation of environmental pollutants and utilization of solar energy, and solve the key problems of photochemical conversion at molecular level with the support of the “Key Laboratory of Environmental Theoretical Chemistry, Ministry of Education”; develop multi-scale simulation methods for complex polymer systems and conduct theoretical research on materials at multi-scale; provides theoretical basis for the development of materials via the theoretical research on optical functional materials; explore the thermodynamic and kinetic processes of the formation of micro/nano structures of photofunctional materials and their effects on the comprehensive properties of materials by introducing various algorithms in the field of machine learning into the kinetic theoretical simulation research. Correlated research results have published more than 100 SCI papers in international famous academic like J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. and have more than 40 invention patents, been founded by more than 50 national, provincial and municipal scientific research projects, and has won 1 award for military science and technology progress.

2, Photocatalysis and Applications

Based on semiconductor (inorganic, polymer, complexes, etc.) and hybrid material, with reasonable design to the material composition, band, 3D space and surface structure, new micro/nano materials and devices are synthesized via methods like photochemical, microwave and thermal chemical, for the applications in environmental photocatalysis, energy photoelectric catalysis, organic matter type catalytic conversion, photocatalytic Janus micro-nano motor, etc. Some important scientific problems in solar photocatalysis are expounded, and the relevant technologies are mastered, for providing a new way for human to fully utilize solar energy. Correlated research results have published more than 80 SCI papers in international famous academic like J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. and have more than 40 invention patents, been founded by more than 30 national, provincial and municipal scientific research projects, and has won the second prize of Guangdong Provincial Natural Science Award.

3, Luminescence Chemistry and Applications

Through the rational design of organic molecular chemical structure, the exciton excitation and radiation process are controlled effectively, and the luminescent materials with rich optical properties are developed. The synergistic relationship between rare earth ions and host molecules is constructed by assembling a novel optical sensor based on rare earth elements to block transitions. The luminescent properties of porous MOFs and COFs with different crystalline structures are studied. The exploration of the application of new light-emitting materials in chemical sensing, medical diagnosis and treatment, safety and anti-counterfeit labels, information display and other aspects are performed, for further developing green and low-cost chemical synthesis reaction to prepare multifunctional light-emitting materials. Textbooks such as “General Course of Green Chemistry” and “Advanced Organic Chemistry -- Structure, Reaction and Mechanism” are published. Correlated research results have published more than 80 SCI papers in international famous academic like J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. and have more than 30 invention patents, been founded by more than 20 national, provincial and municipal scientific research projects. The one-step process of preparing luminescent materials has been realized and the cost of display materials has been greatly reduced. This research achievement has won the first prize of Science and Technology Award of Guangdong Province.

4, Photovoltaic Materials and Devices

Solar photovoltaic power generation technology (solar cells) is considered to be one of the most effective solutions to alleviate the energy crisis since solar energy is an inexhaustible source of clean energy. Green and low-cost synthesis methods of photovoltaic materials as well as improving the power conversion efficiency and longtime stability, are investigated by rational design of molecular structure of organic photovoltaic materials. New types of interfacial materials are studied for improving the collecting efficiency of charge carriers. The thermodynamic and kinetic processes during the morphological evolution of heterojunction in photoactive layer are studied. The key technology of large area printing preparation of solar cells is explored. Correlated research results have published more than 60 SCI papers in international famous academic like J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int., Adv. Mater. and ACS Energy Lett., have more than 30 invention patents, been founded by more than 20 national, provincial and municipal scientific research projects.