On August 11-12, the Workshop on Industrial Technology of Graphene was successfully held in Xiamen University (XMU), which was co-sponsored by Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials (iChEM) and Graphene Industry and Engineering Research Institute of XMU.
Total seventeen experts from home and abroad were invited to make lectures at this workshop, including 2010 Nobel Laureate in Physics Prof. Kostantin Novoselov from The University of Manchester, Prof. Zhongfan Liu (MCAS) from Peking University, etc.. All the invited experts are well-known for the research in the relative graphene fields. At this meeting many wonderful lectures from the experts are based on the hot topics in the recent, focusing on the trend and perspective of the fundamental research, the industrialization and technology of graphene. This meeting also gave ample time for free discussion, in order to enhance the communication and cooperation in graphene research and to promote the application of graphene from the preparation to industry application. Prof. Zhongqun Tian (MCAS) and Prof. Nanfeng Zheng are co-chairs of this meeting, and totally more than eighty experts and students from XMU and other institutions participated in this meeting, with the discipline background of chemistry, physics, materials, energy, information et al.
At the opening ceremony, Prof. Zhongqun Tian gave the warm welcome to all invited experts and participants. Then Prof. Novoselov made a wonderful lecture on “Vander waals heterostructures and their application”, which included not only the frontier progress of fundamental research of graphene and 2D material, but also the application of graphene in printing electronic devices, military security protection, plastic additives, waste heat disposal process, and seawater filtration, especially displayed the result in printing electronic devices made by his group. During the meeting the participants gave very thorough and heated discussions on the each topic presented.
At the end of this workshop, Prof. Zhongqun Tian and Prof. Zhongfan Liu made a comprehensive summary and gave some suggestions towards the graphene research. Prof. Tian thinks fundamental research of graphene is out of step with the actual application. Graphene always has well defined structure in fundamental research while the structures in actual application are various. So Prof. Tian calls for a clear definition for graphene, to realize the relevance between the functions and the structures of graphene. He also emphasizes the importance of integrating domestic research resources and avoids repeated research work, to finally find the key for graphene applications by taking the advantage of different groups. Prof. Zhongfan Liu thinks there needs a large number of researchers focusing on the fundamental research of the graphene growth. The application in downstream industries can only come true upon the preparation well-developed. Besides, in industrialization of graphene Prof. Liu thinks, thermal conductivity of graphene may realize the application in a faster step. In touch screen aspect, graphene also can be applied with the advantage in flexible electronic devices. In energy storage and battery, it is not necessary to expect the performance become better and better. In future graphene may also have some application in filtration. Prof. Liu said we should not expect graphene to replace the existing materials in all fields, but develop its property in the areas which fit for graphene. Do not blindly go forward but always have a dream of graphene.
Prof. Novoselov has been awarded as iChEM Honorary Distinguished Professor since June 2014, and became a Honorary Professor of XMU in April 2016. Until now he has already visited XMU total eight times and stayed for a span of about four months for a substantial collaborative research. Meanwhile, Prof. Novoselov strongly supports XMU in many aspects including cultivating talents, scientific research and discipline construction etc.
