In general, our lab is focused on the research of polymer-related sicentific and engineering issues. As is known, polymer is a large molecule composed of repeated subunits. Because of their specific structure and consequent properties, polymer can cover many shortages of ceramics and metals and have played an essential and ubiquitous role in everyday life.

  As presented by structure-properties relationship, the properties of polymer were mainly determined by intramolecular covalent chemical bonds and intermolecular non-convalent forces. Attributed to specific chainlike molecular structure, polymer also exhibited distinct properties from common organic small molecules and macromolecules. Starting from linear chainlike atomic structure, current polymer research works deploy mainly centering around the investigation and modifications of the interaction of intrachain atoms and interchain atoms. For different bonding types of intrachain atoms, polymer may present different optical and electrical properties,  and thus involve insulators, semiconductors, conductor, fluorescent matter, etc. The interchain interaction of polymer mainly affect thermal and mechanical properties of polymer, such as melt point, strength, solubility, etc. Thus, how to control the bonding of intrachain atoms and the interaction of interchain atoms is an especially important topic in the development of the whole polymer science.

  Our research group is interested in many polymer-related issues and have made a lot of efforts in polymer science and engineering. Currently, our research interests mainly focus on the following areas:

• Polymer alloy

   Polymer alloy is the mixture of different polymers. It can incorporate the advantages of different polymer into one material, and thus can meet many specified requirements for novel materials.

• Polymer-inorganic composites:

   The addition of inorganic filler into polymer matrix can obviously affect the interaction of polymer molecules and the inside structure of polymer, and thus change the physical and mechanical properties of polymer materials. By adding inorganic filler into polymer matrix, many novel functions, such as magnetic property, electrical conductivity, photoluminescence, thermal  conductivity, etc, can be introduced to creat new functional materials. Currently, polymer composites have been used widely in everyday life and are showing the increasing application markets.

• Natural and biological polymer:

   Our lab is very interested in natural and biological polymer, such as cellulose, protein, DNA, etc. Especially, we are delicated to know about the mechanical properties of single molecular chain. Also, we are trying to develop cellulose-based products for large-scale real application.

• Electrospun polymer-based nanofiber and nanospheres:

   By employing electrospinning technique, polymer and composites can be spun into one-dimensional fibres. Further electrospinning equipment improvement or precursor solution adjustment can make hollow fibre or porous polymer structure produced easily. In addition, electrospraying can also fabricate porous hierachical polymer spheres. These porous structrue can show promising application in the absorption of pollutant ions and molecules, and increasing surface area can also load other funtional matter for catalytic and energy storage application.

• Nanostructured and carbon-based materials:

  Nanostructured materials and carbon-based materials, like carbon nanotubes, graphene, carbon nanofibre, amorphous carbon, etc, are recently research hot spots. Nanoscale effects make them present many unique properties different from bulk materials. The combination of nanoscale materials and carbon-based materials with polymer bring many new opportunities for the production of new types of materials. Especially, carbon-based materials filling into polymer matrix can significantly enhance mechanical properties and electrical performance of polymer, and show surprising prospects of composite materials. In addition, the incorporation of nanoscale materials into polymer can also result in the improvement of polymer properties, such as wear resistance, thermal conductivity, magnetic properties, etc.

• Polymer-based flexible electronics and packaging materials:

   Polymer-based transparent conductive materials are becoming more and more important with the fast development of optoelectronic technique. By incorporating electrical conductivity, optical transmission, and high impact resistance into one unit, this kind of materials will show enormous advantages in the future optoelectronic field, such as OLED, solar cells, displays, in contrast to conventional conductive glass. In addition, with the progress of electronic technique, the packaging of electric devices also become more and more important, and the research of the packaging materials will attract more attention.

• Physicochemical mechanism and simulation:

   Mechanism study is the cornerstone to direct the experiment and application. Our lab is also interested in theoretical study of natural phenomena, such as lubrication, diffusion, chemical reaction mechanism and dynamics. Some good progresses have been made. For example, by measuring the diffusion of dye molecule within polymer gels, molecular diffusion process can be well recognized, and it can provide good guides for effective packaging of food and electronic products, separation of liquid and gas, etc.