Colloidal nanomaterial inks provide a versatile platform for fabricating functional materials and devices across electronics, energy, and emerging bioapplications. Central to their performance is interfacial chemistry, which governs nanocrystal stability, assembly, and coupling across multiple length scales, from solution to solid-state films. This symposium will highlight recent advances in understanding and controlling interfaces in colloidal quantum dot and nanomaterial systems, including ligand design, surface reactivity, and interparticle interactions. Particular emphasis will be placed on elucidating how interfacial phenomena influence ink formulation, processing pathways, and the resulting structural and functional properties of assembled materials. Contributions addressing synthesis, in situ and in operando characterisation, and data-driven or automated approaches to reproducibility and scale-up are encouraged. By bridging fundamental insights with application-driven design, the symposium aims to connect interfacial chemistry to device performance in next-generation technologies, including optoelectronics, energy conversion, and sensing applications.
- Surface chemistry and ligand engineering
- Functional inks and solution-processable materials
- Interfaces in semiconductor nanocrystals
- Film formation, nanoscale organization and self-assembly mechanisms
- Synthetic approaches: flow, automation, scalability and reproducibility
- In situ and in operando characterization (of processing and assembly)
- From interfacial chemistry to device performance
Gaël DE PAËPEProf. Z. Hens received his PhD in applied physics from Ghent University in 2000, worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Utrecht University and was appointed professor at the Ghent University department of inorganic and physical chemistry in 2002. His research concerns the synthesis, processing and characterization of colloidal nanocrystals.
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Lai-Hung LaiProfessor Ru-Shi Liu received his Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Soochow University (Taiwan) in 1981. He got his Master's Degree in nuclear science from the National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan) in 1983. He obtained two Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry from National Tsing Hua University in 1990 and the University of Cambridge in 1992. He joined Materials Research Laboratories at the Industrial Technology Research Institute as an Associate Researcher, Research Scientist, Senior Research Scientist, and Research Manager from 1983 to 1995. Then, he became an Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry of the National Taiwan University from 1995 to 1999. Then, he was promoted to Professor in 1999. In July 2016, he became a Distinguished Professor.
He got the Excellent Young Person Prize in 1989, the Excellent Inventor Award (Argentine Medal) in 1995, and the Excellent Young Chemist Award in 1998. He received the 9th Y. Z. Hsu Scientific Paper Award in 2011 for his excellent energy-saving research. He received the Ministry of Science and Technology awards for distinguished research in 2013 and 2018. In 2015, he received the distinguished award for Novel and Synthesis by IUPAC and NMS. In 2017, he received the Chung-Shang Academic Paper Award. He was a “Highly Cited Researcher” by Clarivate Analytics in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2023. He received the Hou Chin-Tui Award in 2018 for his outstanding research in basic science. He received the 17th Y. Z. Hsu Chair Professor Award for contributing to excellent research on “Green Science & Technology” in 2019. He then received the 26th TECO award for his contributions to combining the academic and practical applications of materials chemistry in 2019. He received the Academic Award of the Ministry of Education and the Academic Achievement Award from the Chemical Society located in Taipei in 2020. He won the Journal of the Chinese Chemical Society Best Paper Award in 2021. He obtained the FutureTech Award from the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2021 and 2024. He received the NSRRC Outstanding Paper Award in 2024. He received the 4th Green Chemistry Application and Innovation Award (Lifetime Achievement Award) of the Ministry of Environment. He received the CNRS Chemistry Ambassador for Chemical Sciences award in France.
His research focuses on Materials Chemistry. He is the author and co-author of more than 712 publications in international scientific journals with total citations >41,038, h-index: 100. He has also been granted more than 258 patents.
Bio Professional Preparation M.S. in Chemistry, with Honours, University of Bari, Italy, 1996 Ph.D. in Chemistry, University of Bari, Italy, 2001 Research interests Prof. L. Manna is an expert of synthesis and assembly of colloidal nanocrystals. His research interests span the advanced synthesis, structural characterization and assembly of inorganic nanostructures for applications in energy-related areas, in photonics, electronics and biology.
Vanessa Wood is a professor in the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at ETH Zurich, where she heads the Laboratory for Nanoelectronics. Before joining ETH in 2011, she was a postdoctoral associate in the laboratory of Professor Yet-Ming Chiang and Professor Craig Carter in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, performing research on novel lithium-ion battery systems. She received her MSc and PhD from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Her graduate work was done in the group of Professor Vladimir Bulović and focused on the development of optoelectronic devices containing colloidally synthesized quantum dots.
Maksym Yarema received his master degree in Chemistry from Lviv National University (Ukraine) in 2007. From 2008 to 2012, he worked towards his doctorate degree at the Johannes Kepler University Linz (Austria) under supervision of Prof. W. Heiss. In 2012, he joined the research group of Prof. M. V. Kovalenko at EMPA as Marie-Curie fellow. Since 2013, he is working in the Institute for Electronics, ETH Zurich (the research group of Prof. V. Wood), where he received the SNSF Ambizione Fellowship in 2016 and the ERC Starting Grant in 2019. His research interest spans various topics of solid-state and physical chemistry as well as chemical engineering. Particular focus is given for colloidal nanomaterials, their synthetic approaches and applications into optoelectronic devices, memory cells, and lithium-ion batteries.