Research topics

Our research is mainly focusing on mesoporous materials and their applications in the fields listed below.

Drug delivery and imaging.  Porous silicon (PSi) has attracted much attention in the nanomedicine due to its high surface area, large pore volume, controllable pore size, and good biocompatibility. The large pore volume and high surface area of PSi are beneficial to load the high content cargos. Both hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs (i.e. poorly soluble drugs) can be easily loaded into PSi by choosing suitable solvents. Moreover, the external and internal surfaces of PSi can be selectively functionalized to achieve multiple application purposes. We are preparing porous silicon-based nanoparticles for cancer therapy and imaging.  Read more here.

Metal adsorption.  We are developing nanoporous hybrid materials that can selectively adsorb certain metals. These materials can extract valuable metals and pre-concentrate metals for analytical purposes. Read more here.

Li-ion batteries.  Silicon is a promising material for Li-ion battery anodes. The volume expansion due to the lithiation of silicon can be buffered by using nanoporous structure inside of silicon itself. By using silicon instead of carbon-based anode materials, the energy density of Li-ion batteries can be increased by one third. Read more here.