High pressure nano science

The PIs working in this area: Bin Chen, Hao Yan, Lin Wang

Nanomaterials are typically referred to as the materials with a length scale less than 100 nm. Over the past decade, nanomaterials, including man-sized metals/alloys, composites, polymers, glasses, ceramics, biological materials and carbon-based nanomaterials, have attracted enormous interest in various fields such as physics, chemistry, materials science, environmental science, biology and so on. Nanomaterials have high surface-to-volume ratio and may contain unusual forms of structural features that can substantially modify materials properties and thus cannot solely be considered as small pieces of bulk materials. Many novel properties have been observed in nanomaterials. Electronic, mechanical, magnetic, optical, chemical, and biological processes can be different at nan scale.

Pressure, an important fundamental thermodynamic variable, adds another dimension to the nan scale sciences. High pressure studies have revealed that the phase transitions, elastic properties and defect-associated deformation mechanisms of materials are domain size dependent. High pressure nano science is a fast emerging field which holds great promise for the discovery of new physics, chemistry and novel properties for applications. Our research interests include (but not limited to) the materials synthesis, the structural, mechanical, chemical, optical and electronic properties of nanomaterials under high pressure.