报告人：A/Prof. Qiang Fu （University of Technology Sydney）
报告题目：Hydrogels at the Water–Resource–Energy Interface
报告时间：2026年11月2日10:00
报告地点：苏州大学独墅湖校区909楼B厅会议室
报告摘要：
Water scarcity is emerging as one of the most pressing global challenges of the 21st century, driven by climate change, population growth, industrialisation and the rapid depletion of accessible freshwater resources. Although Earth contains vast amounts of water, only a very small fraction is readily available for human use, while seawater, hypersaline brines, wastewater and atmospheric moisture remain largely underutilised. Developing low-cost, low-energy and decentralised technologies capable of converting these unconventional water sources into usable freshwater is therefore critical for future water security.
The hydrogel-based Interfacial Solar Evaporation (ISE) system is a floating device mounted on the surface of the sea in which a hydrogel with customized features is integrated. Our recent developments include hierarchically structured hydrogels that decouple water and salt transport for high-salinity desalination, single-component hydrogels with engineered internal interfaces for enhanced evaporation, hydrogel-encapsulated phase-change materials for heat storage and extended water production, and MXene–hydrogel platforms that bridge solar evaporation with advanced oxidative degradation for simultaneous water recovery and pollutant removal. These studies demonstrate that hydrogels are not simply water-containing soft materials, but programmable chemical systems for controlling heat, mass and ion transport at interfaces. This emerging materials platform provides new possibilities for zero-liquid-discharge desalination, atmospheric water harvesting, hydrovoltaic energy generation, pollutant degradation and sustainable water management.
个人简介：
Prof Qiang Fu received his B.E. in Chemical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and completed his Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry at Fudan University in 2009. He then undertook postdoctoral research at The University of Melbourne. He has been awarded several prestigious fellowships, including an Australian Research Council (ARC) Super Science Fellowship, an ARC Future Fellowship and an Emerging Future Leader Fellowship from the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE). A/Prof Fu has secured more than $5 million in competitive research funding and published over 150 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals, including Nat. Commun., Energy Environ. Sci., Adv. Mater., Adv. Funct. Mater., ACS Nano and Angew Chemie. His publications have received more than 10,000 citations, with an h-index of 57. He has also been ranked among Elsevier’s World’s Top 2% Scientists since 2020. He currently leads a research group at the Centre for Technology in Water and Wastewater (CTWW), University of Technology Sydney. His research focuses on interfacial solar evaporation, membrane nanotechnology, two-dimensional metal-organic frameworks, controlled radical polymerisations and functional materials for energy and environmental applications.
联系人：江林教授