Lecture Time: 14:00 on 14th February, 2017

Lecture Room: C501 of Science and Innovation Building

Lecture Title: Advanced Materials Construction based on Plant Polyphenols

Guo Junling

Harvard Medical School

Abstract

Polyphenols, these plant-derived natural products, were traditionally referred to as vegetable tannins, due to their original use in the industrial process of tanning to convert animal hide into leather. This speaker will discuss the possibility to exploring the unique physicochemical and biological properties of polyphenols to serve as an important source of inspiration in the search for new and improved materials. A library of functional metal-phenolic network (MPN) nanostructured films and capsules was prepared from the coordination between a phenolic ligand and a range of metal ions. Furthermore, the polyphenol-based particle functionalization was discoved to facilitate an interfacial molecular interaction-induced self-assembly process. This allowed for the generation of a highly versatile and effective methodology to prepare a large variety of superstructures assembled from a wide range of building blocks. This method displayed significant versatilities of sizes, shapes, microstructures, and compositions as building blocks. The generic nature of this method led to a large family of modularly assembled superstructures including core-satellite, hollow, and hierarchically organized supraparticles. Colloidal-probe atomic force microscopy and molecular dynamics simulations provided detailed insight into therole of this polyphenol-based particle functionalization and how this functionalization facilitated superstructure construction. In functional aspects, the polyphenol-based materials were tailored for advanced drug delivery, positron emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), catalysis, and electromagnetic (EM) applications.

Biography:

Dr. Guo received his PhD at The University of Melbourne under Prof. Frank Caruso (ARC Australian Laureate Fellow, member of Australian Academy of Science), and continued his research in Melbourne in the past 4 years. Before 2013, Dr. Guo conducted his research in the group led by Prof. Bi Shi (member of Chinese Academy of Engineering) and Prof. Xuepin Liao in Sichuan University. Dr. Guo initiated a series of pioneering research on polyphenol-based multifunctional nanomaterials and interfacial self-assembly. In 2014, he reported the library of metal-phenolic networks (MPNs) materials, which represents the establishment of a novel multifunctional materials based on polyphenols. This part of work has been published in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. as front cover and draw a broad attention in material filed. It has been reported by more than 15 international scientific media, including ChemViews Magazine, Phy.org, IDI-Online, etc. Moreover, Dr. Guo explored the use of polyphenols on particle self assembly for the generation of superstructures. This part of work has been published in Nature Nanotech. as a highlighted work in Nature Nanotechnology “News and Views” and received high-profit attentions including broad international media reports and highlights in several Nature sisters and AAAS EurekAlert. His publications encompass more than 35 research papers in a range of high-profit journals, including Nature Nanotech., Angewandte Chem., Adv. Mater., Chem. Sci., J. Phy. Chem. C, etc.