Prof. Wai-Yeung Wong will give a talk entitled "Photofunctional Organometallic Materials for Solar Energy Conversion and Energy Storage".
All are welcomed to join. Please register here (contact form) if you wish to attend the lecture.

Speaker : Prof. Wai-Yeung Wong
(Dean of Faculty of Science and Chair Professor of Chemical Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)

Abstract

Solar energy technologies have gained significant global attention as crucial facilitators for the green and sustainable development of human society and the economy. Organic materials hold great potential in solar energy conversion due to their advantages such as diverse molecular modification, pollution-free nature, low cost, solution processing, and flexible device fabrication. Our research focuses on developing new organometallic materials and investigating their performance in solar cells, solar evaporators and photocatalysis. Iridium and platinum-based molecules with high singlet-to-triplet conversion are explored to improve the exciton lifetime and diffusion length, while also optimizing the active layer morphology to enhance the efficiency of organic solar cells. Additionally, a new strategy is adopted that integrates multiple charge transfer mechanisms, including metal-to-ligand, ligand-to-metal, ligand-to-ligand, and intermolecular charge transfers, into an organometallic polymer. This approach aims to design highly efficient photothermal materials for solar evaporation applications. Interestingly, various organometallic 1D and 2D polymers also hold great promise as efficient photocatalysts in converting water to various useful chemicals and as active electrode materials for energy storage. Hence, the development of new organometallic materials opens a meaningful pathway from molecular design to improving the solar energy conversion efficiency of photo-to-electric, photo-to-thermal and photo-to-chemical processes.

References

• H. Zhou, Y. Sun, M. Zhang*, Y. Ni, W.-Y. Wong* et al., Sci. Bull., 69 (2024) 2862-2869.
• H. Xia, M. Zhang*, H.Wang, Y. Sun, W.-Y. Wong*, G. Li et al., Adv. Funct. Mater., 34 (2024) 2411058.
• L. Zhang, M. Zhang*, Y. Ni, W. Xu, W.-Y. Wong* et al., ACS Mater. Lett., 6 (2024)2964-2973.
• M. Zhang*, Md. N. Ivan, Y. Sun, Z. Li, W.-Y. Wong* et al., J. Mater. Chem. A, 12 (2024), 9055-9065.
• M. Fang, L. Xu*, H. Zhang, Y. Zhu*, W.-Y. Wong*, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 144 (2022) 15143-15154.
• Y. Qin, Y. Wang, J. Lu, L. Xu*, W.-Y. Wong*, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., (2024) e202418269.

Short Biography

Wai-Yeung Wong (Raymond) obtained his B.Sc. (Hons.) and Ph.D. degrees from The University of Hong Kong. After postdoctoral works at Texas A&M University (Advisor: Prof. F. A. Cotton) and the University of Cambridge (Advisors: Profs. The Lord Lewis and P. R. Raithby), he joined Hong Kong Baptist University from 1998 to 2016 and he now works at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University as the Dean of Faculty of Science and Chair Professor of Chemical Technology. He was awarded the RSC Chemistry of the Transition Metals Award, FACS Distinguished Young Chemist Award, State Natural Science Award from China, Croucher Senior Research Fellowship and RGC Senior Research Fellow Award, among others. His research focuses on organometallic and materials chemistry, especially aiming at developing multifunctional molecules and polymers for organic optoelectronics, energy science and metal-based nanomaterials. He has served as the Associate Editor for the Journal of Materials Chemistry C from 2013 to 2022. He is currently the Chairman of Hong Kong Chemical Society and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2023, he was elected as the Foreign Member of the European Academy of Sciences.