Prof. Zhicheng Zhang

Biography

Department of Applied Chemistry ,School of Science, Xi’an Jiaotong University

Research Interest

Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) and its copolymer poly(vinylidene-co-trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE)) are widely utilized as sensor and transducer in electronic and electric fields thanks to their excellent dielectric and piezoelectric properties. More recently, the introduction of some conmonomers with appropriate steric bulk would leads to a great enhancement of their breakdown strength and electric storage capability. These copolymers are expected to work as ideal capacitor materials for energy storage. In addition, fluoro-elastomer is widely used as o-ring in automobile engine for its good oil resistance property. Unfortunately, its Tg is too low (about -25oC) for the o-ring to survive at rigorous environment. How to improve its property at low temperature would be a great subject both in industry and academic. Recently, the controllable free radical polymerization, e.g. atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), has attracted considerable attention and widely employed to synthesis new polymers with well designed structure. But few works has been published about the application in fluoropolymer area, which is expected to be a powerful technique for the functionalization of fluoropolymer. Our research interests are as follows: 1) Synthesis and characterization of the fluoropolymer with novel structure and their functionalization. 2) Study of the dielectric, piezoelectric, and energy storage properties of novel fluoropolymers. 3) Application of ATRP in modification of fluoropolymer to synthesis functional fluoropolymer with tunable properties. 4) Development of fluoropolymer with high energy storage capacity and low energy loss. 5) Application of functionalized fluoropolymer in the modification of fluoro-elastomer to improve its oil resistance property at low temperature. 6) Application of functional fluoropolymer in proton exchange membrane fuel cell.