Associate Professor School of Sciences
Dr. ZongXiang Xu is an Associate Professor in Chemistry Department of South University of Science and Technology of China. Dr. Xu received his B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from Xiamen University. In 2008 he received PhD Degree with Prof. ChiMing Che in Chemistry from the University of Hong Kong, where he completed postdoctoral research between 2009-2010. After that he joined Department of Physics and Materials Science in City University of Hong Kong with Dr. Roy VAL, worked as Senior Research Assistant, Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow between 2010-2012. Dr. Xu has more than 15 years of research experience in design, synthesis characterization of organic/inorganic semiconductor materials and application in optoelectronic devices. He has authored and coauthored >100 papers (with total Google Citation > 1900, h-index = 26) in peer reviewed international journals. Dr. Xu holds membership of SPIE, Chemical Society of China, selected as Editorial Board Member of Scientific Reports.
Personal Profile
Research
1. Design and synthesis of metal phthalocyaine
2. Hole transporting materials of perovskite solar cell
3. Hole injection materials of organic light-emitting diode
4. Energy storage device
Teaching
Teaching Courses
General Chemistry (General Course-Course Coordinator)
Introduction to Organic Electronic and Optoelectronic Materials and Devices (Major Elective Courses)
Publications Read More
During the last 7 years, I have filed 19 patents and published 64 peer-reviewed journal publications including 49 publications as a corresponding/co-corresponding author in top-tier chemistry and materials science journals, including Advance Energy Materials (1); Nano Energy (1); Advanced Functional Materials (1); Journal of Materials Chemistry A (1); ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2); ChemSusChem (2); Solar RRL (5); Journal of Materials Chemistry C (4); Advanced Electronic Materials (1) Electrochimica Acta (5) and Applied Surface Science (1). My independent publications were highlighted by several media or on cover pictures. All my publications have received 1890 citations. My h-index is 26 (Citations retrieved on September 30, 2019 from Google Citation). I devoted my research into the design and synthesis of new MPCs, studied their structure-properties relationship, including such as solubility, molecular planarity, ability to stack and tendency to form crystalline or polycrystalline films, molecular orientation in thin film state, carrier mobility as well as thermal and environmental stability, to make them ideal candidates for high performance and low cost perovskite solar cells as well as other organic optoelectronic devices. In 2017, for the first time, we reported a new HTM of copper (II) phthalocyanine (CuPc) with octamethyl-substituted function groups (CuMe2Pc) (Nano Energy, 2017, 31, 322). A higher power conversion efficiency (PCE) as high as 19.7% is achieved using OMe-TPA-CuPc as dopant-free HTM. The combination of molecular modeling, synthesis, and full experimental characterization sheds light on the nanostructure and molecular aggregation of arylamine-substituted CuPc compounds, providing a link between molecular structure and device properties. Our results reveal the potential of engineering CuPc derivatives as dopant-free HTMs to fabricate cost-effective and highly efficient PSCs with long term stability, and pave the way to their commercial scale manufacturing. (Advanced Energy Materials, 2019, 9, 1901019. Back Cover)