Timely snow promises a good harvest. Together with the white pure snow at the beginning of 2013, coming the good news from 2D nanomaterials research group of DPSE. Since 2004, Graphene has been one of the hot spots in vast fields including condensed materials and physics, chemistry, photochemistry, biology and energy. And in the recent 2-3 years, Graphene-like 2D nanomaterials are also gradually taking the frontier of the research field. In our department, both Prof. Chao Gao and Prof. Mingsheng Xu are exploring in related fields, carrying out the fundamental and application research in the world advanced level.
In the end of 2012, a picture of the graphene fibers produced by the research team of Prof. Chao Gao was selected as one of the annual excellent pictures of Nature. Following this good news, a series of original works from the team of Prof Mingsheng Xu in the field of 2D nanomateralsnanomaterials are producing international effects as well.
At the request of the editor of Chemical Reviews (with five years’ average index of 42.054), Prof. Mingsheng Xu wrote the essay "Graphene-like two-dimensional materials" and this paper is the first review in the field of layered 2D nanomaterials, which took the synthesis technique of graphene as the study background and timely introduced the basic structures, photo and electronic properties and the recent research developments of varieties of graphene-like new nanomaterials such as metal chakcogenide, silicene germanene, BN, class III-V binary compound etc. It also probed into the future prospects of this area.
2D nanomaterials, characterized with unique photoelectric and other properties in corresponding to their structures, enjoy a wide application in the fields of nano-photoelectron, clean energy and biomedicine etc. Prof. Mingsheng Xu has carried out a series of studies and has gained lots of important developments, including: (1)established the universal method of characterizing the numbers of layers of graphene and its structures on the basis of Auger Electron Spectroscopy[ACS Nano 4, 2937-2945 (2010)]. (2)produced 100% single-layered graphene on thin films of Ni; (3)produced thin films of h-BN using segregation method; (4)developed the special instrument producing 2D nanomaterials; (5)invented various technique methods capable of controlling the synthesis of graphene films[for instance ZL 2010 1 0249002.6]；(6)extended the technique methods of 2D naomaterialsnanomaterials to the measurement of the electrons sequencing of genes [for instance ZL 2010 1 0298015.2, US2012/0037919A1, GB2483377A, WO2012/065480 A1, PCT/CN2011/085098], developed fast and low cost gene order detection method. Prof. Mingsheng Xu pays more attention to the synthesis of 2D nanomaterials such as graphene, using the dry process. Complementary to the dry process, exists the wet process of the graphene films.
(By Soulea Xie)
