Introduction to
Institute of Hybrid Materials (IHM)
Director: Prof. & Dr. Jianguo Tang
IHM at Qingdao University is a comprehensive research center for special materials with perfect properties through hybrid technique(s) of heterogeneous raw materials.
Although the each single material has its own properties for special use with advantage(s) and disadvantage(s), the hybrid system with a certain structure can compensate for the weaknesses of each single material involved in the system. This hybrid strategy should generate perfection of a certain material for an application purpose. For example, metals are hard and rich in functional properties, but polymer is soft with poor functional properties. Their hybrid material(s) would be soft with rich functional properties generally. However, heterogeneity of different components causes exclusive nature in hybrid system. To make them compactable and to obtain expected structures of hybrid materials, the special method should be required for a certain hybrid system. Thus, the synthesis methods, the structures and functional properties of hybrid materials are to be investigated, especially the focus should be made at nano-scale. Naturally, our investigation fields are not restricted in organic-inorganic composite systems, but include metal-organic (polymer) systems.
On the other hand, the hybrid strategy is the efficient way to prepare functional nano-blocks with linear, spherical, plate, hollow, core/shell, porous geometrical structures, which are especially available to probing, sensing, imaging, and diagnosing systems in bio- and/or intelligent nanodevices.
The research interests:
1) The preparations of spherical, hollow, core/shell, plate, and porous nano-blocks of metals;
2) Hybrid nano biomaterials for detection, probes, sensors, and diagnoses;
3) Composite materials of functional nano-blocks in polymer matrices;
4) Fluorescence nano-blocks as well as their polymer-matrix composites.