China News Service, Changchun, September 29th, title: Yu Jihong, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: Building a dream chemical technology to serve the country
China News Service reporter Guo Jia
In the field of synthetic chemistry, the formation process of molecular sieves has always been regarded as a "black box", and its directional design and synthesis are extremely challenging.
Yu Jihong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor of the School of Chemistry of Jilin University, has been concentrating on research in this field for more than 30 years, searching for the key to unlocking the "black box".
Molecular sieves are materials that can sieve different molecules.
Because of its large specific surface area and regular nano-pore structure, it is an important catalysis, adsorption separation and ion exchange material in industrial production.
In particular, molecular sieves, as the most important solid catalytic materials in the petrochemical field, play an extremely important role in realizing efficient utilization of resources, energy saving and consumption reduction, and carbon neutralization.
Yu Jihong is teaching.
(Data map) Photo courtesy of Jilin University
Yu Jihong became interested in molecular sieves since he studied for a master's degree under the tutelage of academician Xu Ruren, a well-known inorganic chemist, in 1989, and chose the challenging research direction of molecular engineering of functional materials after teaching at the school.
"Mr. Xu often told me that when doing research, we must aim at the forefront, occupy the commanding heights, have forward thinking, and do things that others have not thought of doing or that others cannot do." Yu Jihong said that the teacher's words have always encouraged him to continue. forward.
However, the initial stage of the research was not smooth sailing. At that time, molecular sieve research was in a bottleneck period, especially the emergence of some hot materials, which made many people give up the research on molecular sieve as a traditional material.
Many people have persuaded Yu Jihong to change the direction of hot spots, otherwise it will be difficult to produce results, but she is unmoved, has been sticking to this field, and constantly innovating.
In order to realize the directional synthesis of molecular sieves, Yu Jihong led the team to work hard, and after many years, he took the lead in creating a molecular sieve synthesis database in the world.
On this basis, constantly summarizing the rules and discovering the rules, the strategy of guiding the directional synthesis of molecular sieves by combining theoretical simulation, data mining and high-throughput experiments was proposed earlier in the world, and several new structural types of molecular sieves were synthesized. China has made zero breakthroughs in the creation of new topology types of molecular sieves.
In 2016, they discovered for the first time the crystallization mechanism by which hydroxyl radicals accelerate the nucleation of molecular sieves, opening up a new path for the efficient and green synthesis of molecular sieve materials.
Talking about the significance of current molecular sieve research, Yu Jihong said that molecular sieve materials have a very broad application prospect and can play an important role in the "double carbon" background.
Yu Jihong is teaching.
(Data map) Photo courtesy of Jilin University
As we all know, fossil energy is one of the most important causes of the greenhouse effect.
Yu Jihong said that the key to achieving carbon neutrality is carbon reduction and carbon sequestration. In the chemical industry, an important path for carbon reduction is efficiency improvement, consumption reduction and energy substitution, and an important path for carbon sequestration is the efficient separation of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Capture and storage transformation.
As an important catalysis, adsorption separation, and ion exchange material in chemistry, molecular sieve materials have a very wide range of applications in these fields.
Facing the current major demand for energy storage materials from new energy technologies, Yu Jihong's team designed and developed a new solid-state electrolyte material based on molecular sieve films, which effectively solved the difficulties in interface construction, internal lithium dendrites and poor stability of traditional solid-state electrolyte materials. Therefore, it provides new ideas for the development of solid-state electrolyte materials and solid-state energy storage devices.
Although the development of molecular sieve materials in China started later than that of western developed countries, in recent years, driven by the policy environment and market environment, the domestic molecular sieve material industry has developed rapidly.
At present, China has become the world's largest producer and demander of molecular sieves.
As a representative of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Yu Jihong called on the vast number of scientific and technological workers to focus on serving the country's strategic needs, devote themselves to scientific research, and continue to make new and greater efforts to build China into a world power in science and technology and realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. contribute.
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