Molecular superassembly for functional mesoporous materials and their future applications

Professor Dongyuan Zhao has devoted himself for 30 years to functional mesoporous materials for the applications in catalysis, energy, electronic materials, and thermal insulation. Prof Zhao developed the new concepts of "acid-base pair" and "charge matching", as well as novel “organic-organic” assembly, to create a wide variety of highly-ordered, large-pore, and stable mesostructured functional materials. These breakthrough works are believed as pioneering and milestone work, open many avenues in mesostructured materials society. Prof. Zhao has created the FDU (Fudan University) series of novel ordered mesoporous materials with large-scale production which have widely been used and investigated in the world. Notably, his creation of ordered mesoporous polymers/carbon materials, led to him winning a First Grade Prize of National Natural Science from the China Government in 2020. Prof. Zhao’s innovations in mesoporous composited molecular sieve catalyst design with core-shell structure, have significantly increasing conversion rates, diesel yields and product quality, generating a profit of 10 billion RMB per year cooperating with Sinopec. The metal palladium embedded mesoporous carbon catalyst jointly developed with Xi’an-Kaili achieved new sales of more than 200 million RMB. Recently, his integration of nanoscale hollow low dielectric mesoporous silica into PCBs has shown promising results, with pilot testing with manufacturer in Haining, promoting the development of China's high-tech electronic information field.

Professor Dongyuan Zhao, Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dean of College of Chemistry and Materials, Ph.D. in Chemistry from Jilin University in 1990; In 1998, he joined the Department of Chemistry of Fudan University as a professor and doctoral supervisor. He was elected as a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2007) and The World Academy of Science (TWAS) (2010). He is the president of the International Mesostructured Materials Association (IMMA) and the executive editor of ACS Central Science of the American Chemical Society. He has devoted himself to the research of functional mesoporous materials synthesis for a long time, proposed the idea of organic-organic self-assembly, and created ordered mesoporous polymers and carbon materials. More than 20 kinds of mesoporous molecular sieves named after Fudan University (FDU series) have been invented. He has published more than 800 SCI papers, and his papers have been cited nearly 150,000 times (h=191). For many consecutive years (2011-2023), he has been listed as a global highly cited scientist in the fields of chemistry and materials by Thomson Reuters. He has won the Third National Innovation Medal (2023), Shanghai Science and Technology Hero (2022), National Natural Science First Prize (2020) and Second Prize (2004), the First Prize of University Scientific Research Outstanding Achievements of the Ministry of Education (2017), and the first Prize of Sinopec Prospective Basic Research Science (2021). American Chemical Society ACS Nano Award (2021), Nano Research Award (2020), Khwarizmi International Award (2019), JCIS Darsh Wasan Award (2018), The 6th "Chemical Contribution Award" of the Chinese Chemical Society (2018), the 1st China Molecular Sieve Achievement Award (2017), TWAS Science Award of the Academy of Sciences of Developing Countries (2016), He Liang Heli Science and Technology Progress Award (2009), IMMA Achievement Award of the International Mesoscopic Structure Association (2008), etc.