 Thank you for those two great talks and on behalf of the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering It's my distinct pleasure to introduce Professor Latiendo He got his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Peking University Then came to the States for his graduate work at UCLA followed by a postdoc at the University of California Berkeley He joined Purdue in 2017 and since then I don't think he's left his office According to his productivity He very shortly got the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award He very recently got the NSF career award and in between he's grown his group to double digits He is on according to the web of science in three years of his five years here An outstanding re sighted researcher, which means he has published papers that get citations at the top 1% of all papers published I Will not tell you what he does. I will leave that to him in his in his time, but he really is Breaking frontiers at the boundaries of material science and chemistry to make devices that will improve human life And with that I will pass this over to Latian. Thank you. Thank you John for the wonderful introduction And also I would like to thank College of Engineering and particularly Marsha and Maria for setting this event up So really wonderful opportunities for us to share a little bit more about ourself just like previous speakers I will not talk about too much technical work Here and I will just share a little bit more about who am I and where I come from and how I get here So John already briefly mentioned So I Look at I was born in Beijing China in 1987 I spent 22 years in Beijing and I will have to say that I went to Peking University study chemistry there and after that I took a long flight arrived at Los Angeles I studied material science with professor Yang Yang there to learn organic electronics materials and the devices and Towards the end of my PhD. I had a short sabbatical type of visit at UC St. Barbara work with Fred Woodall Professor Woodall a little bit about half year learned Organic chemistry and polymer chemistry there and we have a very exciting discovery there I will mention that work later of my talk After my PhD I went to UC Berkeley did my post office With Peter young and learn change the topic a little bit learning organic materials and a nano technology So you can see most of my scientific training is in the west coast in particularly in California So I spent eight years there and obviously US is so big Right, so after that I decided to definitely go to the east and see what's going on on the east side So luckily I got this job at Purdue I took another long flight arrived at this beautiful state of Indiana and Started my independent group here at Purdue. So that I just arrived I was pretty nervous and not sure was what's the future. I luckily over the past five years I met lots of great colleagues great mentors and also great students and staff Who helped me tremendously and helped me go through this tenure process smoothly So I'll spend a few minutes just a mention a few names and introduce them Briefly, okay, so first of all definitely our department head dr. Kim who helped me and he's really a visionary I'm sure you guys all know his great achievement and he leads the department in a very good shape now He provided us an less and a tearless support. I was not only providing the money and the students he really sit down with us and Learn what we need and help us make connections to external people and and really shape our future So without his support, I cannot stand up here today another important mentor is Professor Kesh Aguva was a very very famous person and But I feel he's probably the most humble and you know, I remember In the US anyway, he's always very friendly very approachable. My office was actually next to his office We are in the same suite. We interact almost on a daily basis before COVID after COVID since COVID the change a little bit, but I learned so much from him and I really Enjoyed learning a lot of things from him another important mentor Brian Boudours He's not here today. Whether we just have a great Symposium or the weekend. So we have lots of common research interests We collaborate a lot. We co-advise several students and postdocs I learned lots of polymer chemistry and the physics from him and also I was amazed by his ability of multi-tasking He has he handles so many things at the same time learning teaching research mentoring Service family. So I did the excellent job on every aspect. So I'm still learning that and Then Professor Brezza Boy my fellow colleague was here. Thank you very much for coming Yeah, I was so fortunate to to be able to collaborate with him right from the beginning He is so popular many people want to collaborate with him But I have I have a privilege to to to be able to spend a lot of time with him So we had a very exciting five years multiple couple of nature and nature nanotag paper published together and some joint fundings Yeah, I learned a lot of things from the computational side and your prediction really really accurate So here we find a lot of useful materials based on his simulation and Once you I need to catch up. It's get up early You get up so early. So I promise this year probably I will see you in the in the gym early in the morning So, okay another a few of folks outside can be so Professor Jiang Guo Mei Also my very very good friend. We talk about everything over lunch research teaching in life He give me a lot of tips and suggestions how to how to survive and and Also, he inspired me to doing some Translational work, right? So think a little bit Something that is more practically useful, right? And also I would like to thank Felly back one also in chemistry. She is a hardcore physical chemist and learn lots of quantum mechanics from her and really Teach me a lot of how light and matter interact and how to see the electrons moves in the materials actual thoughts spectroscopy and microscopy really cool stuff We also have lots of collaborations and and many joint papers together and due to limitation of time I won't be able to Introduce each of my mentors in detail, but I definitely all their names here particularly on the highlight Professor Tony Yuan and the Jeff Guili helped me a lot on the teaching side echo taught with them in several courses and Also a few colleagues. I'm here. We'll see is here We talk about lots of our battery and solar will definitely do it in the near future Right and also John we talk about the bio and the solar definitely those are very exciting areas We can work together in the future and because I'm at the nature of my research is kind of interdisciplinary Disciplinary I interact with many people's outside chemie across across the college of engineering particularly lots of people from a material science and Thanks, Professor Wang to be here. Take some of your time your very busy schedule And also folks from ECE and ME professor Kajia-Dao is here. Thank you for coming and enjoys here BME and chemistry. So we have lots of discussions collaborations and also publish a lot of interesting work together So you can see the produce really providing a Very diverse and a very collaborative environment so that I can easily interact with many people Across the campus and did some interesting work together. It's really enjoying learning Lots of things from from my colleagues Also my group my students I also like to thank them without them I cannot do anything in my life So he's so much he's a recent picture. We have about 20 people now in the group So my group is growing very rapidly recently So this picture was took about few weeks ago Leo was she shown was sick So I put another picture here. He just got a poster award last weekend. So that's a picture That's a award ceremony. So congratulations. So he deserves a bigger picture in this slide So I graduated his three students who left the group earlier this year Equity during the lab research doing semiconductor work now in California Interestingly all of them are in California. So Aiden's in Berkeley National Lab doing a postdoc. He's very passionate Passionate about teaching and research. So hopefully he will become a professor soon Blake just joined the first solar research center in California He's trying to commercialize porous gas solar cells now So I'm very happy at least I have one student continuing working on porous gas solar cell and hopefully he'll make this happen. It's also very He's also doing a big favor from me He's trying to establish some collaboration between first solar and me and trying to get some industry funding To the group. So I'm very excited about all of their achievements and I'm sure they will do great in their career path pass, okay And the two of my first postdoc in the group Dr. Engeng Shi and Yao Gao joined almost the same time as with me in 2017 they spent three four years in the group almost like a PhD. So they did a tremendous amount of work in the lab They are now both professors in China. They just got a big start-up package. I'm sure they will do well in China Okay, now a little bit about research what we have done over the past few years So the core of our research is materials chemistry and device engineering We are developing a new type of semiconductor called organic semiconductor Incorporated porous gas or OSIP. I think the short name is pretty cool So it's a hybrid Semiconductor materials really combines advantages from both organic and the inorganic world We are doing material synthesis head of structure fabrication and do some optical electronic property calculations some fundamental understanding On the properties and also apply them into a variety of devices including solar cells LEDs Even transistor and thermoelectrics trying to improve the performance and stability There's a few examples about what we do in the lab We make the materials we grow beautiful hybrid crystals We assemble them into a head of structures and to study some fundamental Electronical process in those materials and we also apply them into real devices large Microscopic devices. This is a solar cell we fabricated We can get almost 25% efficiency in the lab now Almost approaching the single crystal in silicon and that's why the many industries Start up companies and even including for solar the larger solar manufacturing are interested in porous gas or a cell now or research and mainly founded by government a little bit from Private foundations and also P2C Grace here, thanks for the support at the beginning of my research career Yeah, as I said, we are also talking with industry or hopefully get more industry money into the group in the near future So what's new what's what's next? So we are continue to be excited about porous gas semiconductors We will definitely push forward on the on the frontier of this materials chemistry and device performance side But I'm also initiating a new direction Totally different from the porous gas semiconductor. It's about sustainable polymers. So basically we find a way to Create a unique carbon-carbon bond Elongated or weakened carbon-carbon bond. So As you may know in the textbook, we know the carbon-carbon bond usually is 1.54 amstrong in your high school or college chemistry Textbook, but we're able to make a unique bond. It's around 1.6 amstrong. So this weaker bond makes the bond easily breakable so that you can selectively break this bond but without breaking other bonds so you can Convert the polymer back to monomer almost it's a quantitative years So using this concept will be able to Produce chemically recyclable polymers for many applications For example, we can make crystalline polymers for some membrane a strong very strong Filtration membranes or we can make thermoplastic amorphous polymers for 3d printing or for extrusion Let's work for general for many different applications. So we just got a few papers Published is a very new research area and also this is also dr. Kim's vision for the future so if we can utilize this concept and Really put convert translate this fundamental concept into a real use that can have huge societal impact, so I'm also I'm also very excited about this and also I'd like to mention Most of this work also jointly with My friend best always he did a lot of wonderful calculations help us predict the best materials that I can use I have many things exciting things going on. Hopefully we'll be able to share next year I Think that's all finally thanks my my family For all of their support as don't mention has spent quite a bit of time in the office So I feel it'd be good enough spending too much time with my kids I was able to take them to Disney World this summer. So they were super excited and this is some event last week Halloween event Yeah, so that's all about myself and the other excitement over the past few years and thank you everyone for coming I'm happy to answer any questions Questions so I have seen him out of the office the co rec on Tuesday nights He's he's a well there his daughters are linked basketball. So I yeah, I know that Yes, professor for doors. Oh, it's maybe I'm not as nimble of a mind as you but it's it seems awesome. Oh Not not gaining much but um, I Guess my question is it's not not obvious sleep to me at least to go from hybrid perovskites to sustainable polymers What skill sets translate over that allow you to make that leap Thanks, thanks for this question. Yeah, obviously there's a gap in between that. So one reason I come back to the polymers is As I mentioned earlier, I spent half a year in Santa Barbara. So and there I made a Extental discovery and actually published in science. It's probably a record I got the result of second week visits in the Barbara and eventually this was the science paper I but we did not Put too much attention on that after after that paper But that's really the key foundation for the discovery of this elongated bomb But I did not know what to do with it over the past seven eight years. I just put it aside but sometimes I Went back I think what can we do with it and particularly during co-ed it allows me to think a little more because more time stay at home and I remember that's After after lunch I have a walk with my wife Near the house. I was thinking do something new maybe and suddenly got this idea and he's she said always do it It's more exciting than for us guys And then I talked to Dr. Kim and he feels same thing you do it immediately So let's get one two students jump into this area and then I was able to convince convince team He's not here. Yeah, who was doing poor sky work at that time So I asked him to stop doing the poor sky work and jump into the the polymer thing Here yeah, actually he graded from st. Barbara He also worked with Fred Woodall for few months during his undergrad but he was able to Make lots of initial discovery on that and also another interesting story is she Because I have one student working on this. I feel not enough and he'd accelerate then that I cannot find the right students with the right chemistry and polymer background immediately working on this project and My friend professor may kind of land his students to me He's a student issue. He's not not gradated and he also like stopped his project and jump into this project So I'm really grateful We have a couple of comments A couple of comments online Hello, okay, there we go All right, dr. Yi says thanks for sharing your research journey and dr. Rahman says asks the potential for recyclability by design is exciting What are some of the challenges in implementation? Yeah, great point I think there are many new exciting chemistry to take off the polymer recycling issue as there are two major approaches One is deal deal with the existing polymers particularly polyethylene polypropylene polystyrene Existing polymers you need we need to develop a new catalyst But most of the catalysts are very very expensive. There are a couple of recent work Reporting Lusinium or iridium platinum catalyst. Those are super expensive more expensive than gold or diamond So we cannot throw in those catalysts to recycle the dirt cheap polyethylene another approach a polymer chemist Want to develop new polymers to replace the existing polymers again the cost is a major issue lots of new polymers They show the Depolymerizability you can convert them back you can recycle them, but those some polymers are usually very Composal very strange very exotic Components so it's very hard to scale up I believe I Try to design polymers with a simple structure as possible not creating like a to crazy chemistry but but at the same time maintain the Processibility and recyclability though. So that's the challenging part. I think our chemistry is close, but The major challenge is the cost or had really bring down the cost to close to the existing polymers I think up this family of compounds pretty simple straightforward I think it's very promising Next question is along the same line when you change the chemical bond or the distance How does it affect on the heat to break it down or to fabricated back? Sorry Yes, this is a key part so We want to use the heat because I learned from industry the paralysis is the most economical process They don't want to use iridium or platinum catalyst But the heat is tricky you want polymer to be stable enough you don't want them to degrade when you pour hot water on it But also at the same time you don't want to be too strong if it requires five six hundred degrees C It will all the bottom will break you will get a big mass of mixtures So by using this concept we can control the strength of the bomb make it the in the right range We think 200 to 250 is the right range Usually you don't need such high temperature in daily life, but it's low enough to easily depolarize All right with that if there's no other questions we'll conclude. Let's thank Professor do again. Thank you I was just gonna Thank everyone for joining us today three wonderful presentations and discussions And I'd like to just remind everyone that while we are done for the celebrating associate professor's event for this fall semester We are Maria and Marsha are working already on the spring Events in this series. So look forward to seeing you at this event again in the spring semester. Thank you