Welcome to the ZhouLab!

News: Open postdoctoral position

Our vision is to achieve rational design in solid-state materials by mastering the art and science of their synthesis. The ability to create materials with precisely tailored functions is critical for advancing next-generation technologies in energy, electronics, and quantum information science. While fields like organic chemistry allow for predictablet retrosynthetic planning, achieving such ‘synthesis-by-design’ for extended solids remains a grand challenge. We are dedicated to bridging this gap by developing the fundamental concepts and innovative techniques that will guide the creation of novel materials.

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Research Highlight

We have long suspected that high-temperature solutions (or fluxes) can dissolve precursors into discrete solvated species. These intermediates, analogous to molecular building blocks in coordination chemistry, subsequently dictate the assembly of the final extended solid. In a recent work published in JACS, we demonstrated that the size and coordination of Ag-Se building blocks decrease with increasing temperature or basicity, as illustrated below:

Building on our ability to control the structural motifs and coordination environments within Ag-Se systems, we further demonstrate that this understanding enables the kinetic construction of unique structure types. This was achieved using a kinetically controlled diffusion method, which facilitates the co-precipitation of distinct building blocks to form a new complex silver selenide exhibiting three distinct structural motifs, as depicted below: