Inorganic Chemistry            -​           Materials Chemistry          -        Physical Chemistry

The Lu group focuses on the development of functional hybrid organic-inorganic materials and nanomaterials with exotic and controllable optical, electronic, spin and magnetic properties. These materials are useful for energy-related applications including optoelectronics, spintronics, and catalysis. Our primary research interest is to discover and design new inorganic and hybrid materials with unique properties and to understand the fundamental processes through which light, charge, and spin are strongly coupled. Our approach to this challenge includes the development of new synthetic methodologies and materials characterization via steady-state and ultrafast spectroscopies. Research themes in the Lu group lie at the boundary of inorganic and physical chemistry. For more information, please check our publication page. 

Current research interest include:
1. Hybrid organic-inorgnic solide-state materials: synthesis, characterization, and devices. Hybrid organic-inorgnic materials combine both molecular tunability from the organic phase, and the photophysical properties from the inorganic sublattice, thus offer a rich playground for chemist to design new materials with exotic, yet tunable, optical, electronic, and magnetic properties. We are particularly interested in developing solution-processable perovskite-inspired organic-inorganic semiconductors for cheap, efficient, and flexible optoelectronics including solar cell, photodetector, LED, and spin-optoelectronics. We explore the chemical and structural diversity of various coordinating and non-coordinating hybrid frameworks. We apply the concept of symmetry-breaking enabled by chemical tools to afford non-centrosymmetric materials to twist photons via light-matter interaction, and to enable circularly polarized luminescence and lasing, chiral amplification, chiral self-assembly, and asymmetric synthesis.

 Nat. Rev. Chem., 2022, 6，470-485; JACS, 2022,  144, 4919;  ACIE, 2022, e202215206; ACIE, 2023, e202304486.
ACS Nano., 2024, 18, 5890; Chem. Mater., 2022, 34, 2813.

2. Colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals: synthesis, photophysics and photochemistry. Colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals are a class of nanocrystalline materials that exhibit very interesting photophysical properties due to quantum confinement. For instance, due to the quantized energy and relaxation of the translational momentum conservation rule, "Auger process" can be much more efficient than bulk semiconductors, generating high energy hot electrons. Our group is particularly interested in understanding their rich photophysics with spectroscopic tools, and to utilize their unique photophysical properties to enable challenging photonic process and chemical transformations. We are interested in developing a nanocrystal-based composite that can efficiently convert NIR photons to visible photons via a photon upconversion process. We are also exploring new photophysical processes such as Auger process, thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF), localize surface plasmonic resonance (LSPR), and spin-involved photochemistry to enable challenging two-photon processes and chemical transformations.

 AM, 2024, 2409096; EES, 2020, 13，1347-1376; JACS, 2019,  141, 22242;  ACS Nano, 2019, 13, 939.

3. Chirality and spin chemistry: spin ordering and spin polarization in solids and nanocrystals. Spin chemistry is the research that focuses on the electron spin effects in chemical molecules and processes. This research has significant implications for chemical synthesis, magnetic materials, and quantum information science. Chiral-Induced Spin Selectivity (CISS) has received extensive attention because it enables the manipulation of quantum spin states in zero magnetic field at room temperature. We are interested in developing new chemical systems that allow to engineer and understand the CISS effect, and in leveraging the CISS effect to control and manipulate chemical processes. We fabricate next-generation spin-optoelectronic devices such as spin-LEDs that can control charge, spin and light with symmetry-breaking semiconductors. We seek to understand how the breaking of spatial reversal symmetry induces unconventional phenomenon coupled with light, charge and spin. We are also interested in long-range magnetic ordering enabled by spin exchange interactions in solids and nanocrystals. We explore new photochemistry enabled by spin exchange interactions in colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals.

  Nat. Sci. Rev., 2024, nwae212; JACS, 2024,  146, 14157; Nano Lett., 2024, 10, 3125; Chem. Mater., 2023, 36, 551.