Introduction

Research Interests
carbon and related materials, biomass-derived materials, energy-storage materials, nanomaterials.

Biographical Information

Dr. Binyuan Zhao, born in 1973, currently holds the position of associate director of MIE (Materials Industrial Engineering research center), School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research is focused on biomass resources, their large-scale and high value-adding application. The strategy is to transform the biomass waste into carbon materials, porous materials, energy and environmental functional composites etc. He has led and participated in several national, provincial and ministerial research projects, and is the director of three University-enterprise joint research centers. He has published 48 SCI-indexed papers, which have been collectively cited 494 times. His main achievements include:
1. Proposal of an energy storage and conversion mechanism for surface functional groups. Based on this mechanism, “green” methods have been developed to prepare nanostructured metals. In particular, single-crystal silver nano-belt has been controllably produced in a very large scale. This mechanism has also been successfully substantiated to fabricate an all-carbon fuel cell----a conceptually new fuel cell.
2. Invention of many methods to produce a variety of carbon materials at a low cost: biomass derived carbonaceous mesophase, activated carbon monolith, diamond-like carbon films, high-quality graphene, and carbon-hydroxyapatite composites etc. The industrial application of these materials has been explored in waste water treatment, air cleaning, surface treatment of stainless steel etc.
3. Application of the accumulation-conversion synergic mechanism in the design of environmental protection materials: Invented a method to produce activa-carbon-supported silver catalyst for the room-temperature decomposition of formaldehyde, and prepared hydroxyapatite-carbon composites for industrial waste water treatment.
4. Development of a technique to stabilize magnetorheological fluid with the encapsulation of guar gum.

Research Interests

carbon and related materials, biomass-derived materials, energy-storage materials, nanomaterials.

Selected Publications

(1) Liu, F.; Gu, Y.; Hu, Y.; Wang, Z.; Ning, Y.; Bradley, R.; Lou, D.; Zhao, B.; Wu, W. Freestanding Ultrathin Precisely Structured Hierarchical Porous Carbon Blackbody Film for Efficient Solar Interfacial Evaporation. Solar RRL 2023, 7 (2), 2200803. DOI: 10.1002/solr.202200803.

(2) Liu, F.; Pang, H.; Gu, Y.; Ning, Y.; Bradley, R.; Zhao, B.; Wu, W. Electrically powered artificial black body for low-voltage high-speed interfacial evaporation. Journal of Materials Chemistry A 2022, 10 (43), 22992-23000. DOI: 10.1039/d2ta06972e.

(3) Dong, H.; Yang, H.; Ning, Y.; Liu, F.; Bradley, R.; Zhao, B.; Wu, W. Large-scale facile green synthesis of porous silver nanocubes on monolithic activated carbon for room-temperature catalytic oxidation of formaldehyde. Applied Physics A 2022, 128 (11). DOI: 10.1007/s00339-022-06049-z.

(4) Wang, L.; Liu, F.; Pal, A.; Ning, Y.; Wang, Z.; Zhao, B.; Bradley, R.; Wu, W. Ultra-small Fe3O4 nanoparticles encapsulated in hollow porous carbon nanocapsules for high performance supercapacitors. CARBON 2021, 179, 327-336. DOI: 10.1016/j.carbon.2021.04.024.

(5) Wang, L.; Liu, F.; Pal, A.; Ning, Y.; Wang, Z.; Zhao, B.; Bradley, R.; Wu, W. Hierarchical Structured Multidimensional Nano Carbon Bowl @MoS2/Graphene Electrodes with Enhanced Electrochemical Capacitance Performances. Journal of Alloys and Compounds 2021, 887, 161401. DOI: 10.1016/j.jallcom.2021.161401.

(6) Wang, L.; Liu, F.; Zhao, B.; Ning, Y.; Zhang, L.; Bradley, R.; Wu, W. Carbon Nanobowls Filled with MoS2 Nanosheets as Electrode Materials for Supercapacitors. ACS Applied Nano Materials 2020, 3 (7), 6448-6459. DOI: 10.1021/acsanm.0c00924.

(7) Wang, L.; Liu, F.; Ning, Y.; Bradley, R.; Yang, C.; Yong, K.-T.; Zhao, B.; Wu, W. Biocompatible Mesoporous Hollow Carbon Nanocapsules for High Performance Supercapacitors. Scientific Reports 2020, 10 (1). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-61138-4.

(8) Liu, F.; Lai, Y.; Zhao, B.; Bradley, R.; Wu, W. Photothermal materials for efficient solar powered steam generation. Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering 2019, 13 (4), 636-653. DOI: 10.1007/s11705-019-1824-1.

(9) Liu, F.; Zhao, B.; Wu, W.; Yang, H.; Ning, Y.; Lai, Y.; Bradley, R. Low Cost, Robust, Environmentally Friendly Geopolymer–Mesoporous Carbon Composites for Efficient Solar Powered Steam Generation. Advanced Functional Materials 2018, 28 (47). DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201803266.

(10) Zhao, H.; Ning, Y.; Zhao, B.; Yin, F.; Du, C.; Wang, F.; Lai, Y.; Zheng, J.; Li, S.; Chen, L. Tunable growth of silver nanobelts on monolithic activated carbon with size-dependent plasmonic response. Scientific Reports 2015, 5 (1). DOI: 10.1038/srep13587.

Research Projects

1. SJTU-Schneider Joint Research Center on Advanced Materials, 2012-2014
2. SJTU-Wintop Joint Research Center on Energy and Environmental Protection Materials (SWEE), 2010-2014
3. SJTU-LonghaiSiC Joint Research Center on Optical-Thermal Novel Materials, 2011-2015

Honors & Awards

1. Most promising technology award. International industrial exhibition on young researchers’ innovation, Shanghai, 2005
2. Excellent young staff award, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 2007-2008
3. Excellent teacher award. Shanghai Jiao Tong University 2009