Dongyuan Zhao

Fudan University

Work description: 

Mesoporous materials are solids containing pores of 2-50 nm in diameter. They are indispensable for a broad range of applications, including catalysis, energy conversion and storage, environmental remediation, and biomedicine. How to tune and precisely control the size, order, and surface composition of the pores has long been the Holly Grill in materials chemistry. Up till the late 1990s, it remained a challenge to synthesize ordered mesoporous materials with tunable pore sizes, diverse compositions, and broad functionalities. 

Since 1998, Zhao has developed many innovative, robust, and scalable methods based on molecular self-assembly to produce ordered mesoporous solids with unprecedented precision in terms of pore size, compositional, and structural controls. One of the major contributions by Zhao is a thorough understanding of the self-assembly process under different experimental conditions. The synthetic methods developed by Zhao have been widely adopted worldwide to produce functional porous materials with well-controlled properties for a broad range of applications. His original studies greatly expanded the scope of mesoporous materials and rapidly transformed them into a class of technologically important materials. 

Zhao’s innovative work has brought mesoporous materials to the forefront of chemistry, materials science, and nanotechnology by establishing these functional materials as a transformative platform for broad applications in heterogeneous catalysis, energy storage and conversion, environmental protection, and biomedicine. Significantly, he has bridged fundamental research with practical application, translating his innovations into impactful industrial technologies, such as heavy-oil/residual-oil hydrocracking in petrochemical industry, silicon-carbon anodes for Li-batteries, and low-dielectric (low-k) materials for printed circuit boards.

Representative Publications:

[1] Science 1998, 279, 548–552.
[2] Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2005, 44, 7053–7059.
[3] J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2008, 130, 28–29.
[4] Nat. Rev. Mater. 2016, 1, 16023.

Dongyuan Zhao was born in 1963 in Shenyang, Liaoning. He received his Ph.D. in 1990 from Jilin University. He is currently a professor at Fudan University.