Hui-Ming Cheng

Institute of Metal Research, CAS


TITLE

Exploration of New 2D Materials and Their New Properties


Short Biography

Prof. Hui-Ming Cheng is graduated from Hunan University, China in 1984 and received his Ph. D in 1992 from Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMR CAS). He is the director of the Advanced Carbon Research Division of Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, IMR CAS since 2001, and the director of the Institute of Technology for Carbon Neutrality, Faculty of Materials Science and Energy Engineering, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2021. He is a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences and a fellow of TWAS. He used to work at Kyushu Research Center of AIST and Nagasaki University, Japan from 1990 to 1993, and MIT, USA from 1997 to 1998.

His research activities mainly focus on energy materials and devices, carbon nanotubes, graphene and other 2D materials. He has published over 900 papers with an h-index of 159, and is a Highly Cited Researcher in three fields of materials science, chemistry, and environment and ecology. He has given over 230 plenary/keynote/invited lectures at various conferences, and won three State Natural Science Award of China (2nd class in 2006, 2017 and 2020), Charles E. Pettinos Award from American Carbon Society, Felcht Award from SGL, Germany, and ACS Nano Lecture Award. He has also spun off several high-tech companies. He used to be an Editor of Carbon from 2000 to 2015 and Editor-in-Chief of New Carbon Materials from 1998 to 2015, and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Energy Storage Materials since 2015.

Abstract

Identification of two-dimensional (2D) materials in the monolayer limit has led to discoveries of new phenomena and unique properties. In this lecture, I’ll first report the growth of large-area high-quality 2D ultrathin Mo2C crystals by CVD[1], which show 2D characteristics of superconducting transitions that are consistent with Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless behaviour and strong dependence of the superconductivity on the crystal thickness. Furthermore, when we introduce elemental silicon during CVD growth of nonlayered molybdenum nitride, we have grown centimeter-scale monolayer films of MoSi2N4 which does not exist in nature and exhibits semiconducting behavior, high strength, and excellent ambient stability[2]. On the other hand, we have found that a class of membranes assembled with 2D transition-metal phosphorus trichalcogenide nanosheets give exceptionally high ion conductivity and superhigh lithium ion conductivity[3]. Interestingly, we even demonstrate an anomalously large magneto-birefringence effect in transparent suspension of magnetic 2D crystals[4], with three orders of magnitude larger than that in previously known transparent materials. Moreover, based on this phenomenon, we developed a stable and birefringence-tunable deep-ultraviolet modulator from 2D hexagonal boron nitride which gives rise to a ultra-high specific magneto-optical Cotton–Mouton coefficient, about five orders of magnitude higher than other potential deep-ultraviolet-transparent media[5]. These findings indicate a great promise of 2D materials.

  • C. Xu et al., “Large-area high-quality 2D ultrathin Mo2C superconducting crystals”, Nature Materials 14, p. 1135 (2015).
  • Y. L. Hong et al, “Chemical vapor deposition of layered two-dimensional MoSi2N4 materials”, Science 369, p. 670 (2020).
  • X. T. Qian et al, “CdPS3 nanosheets-based membrane with high proton conductivity enabled by Cd vacancies”, Science 370, p. 596 (2020).
  • B. F. Ding et al, “Giant magneto-birefringence effect and tuneable colouration of 2D crystal suspensions”, Nature Communications 11 (1), p. 3725 (2020).
  • H. Xu et al, “Magnetically tunable and stable deep-ultraviolet birefringent optics using two-dimensional hexagonal boron nitride”, Nature Nanotechnology 17, p.1091 (2022).

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