Call for Papers

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

This symposium will cover a broad range of topics that focus on building advanced materials via aggregation and/or self-assembly, both experimentally and theoretically. Aggregation and self-assembly are important pathways in the formation of nature, including minerals and living systems, and has become important methods to fabricate advanced materials in both laboratory and industrial scales. To date, plentiful materials synthesized via aggregation or self-assembly have been applied in various fields such as biomedicine, energy, environment, catalysis, optics, electrics, and magnetics. For example, the interconnected nanoparticle superlattices, which were fabricated by self-assembly of Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles, have been used as anodes to improve the performance of lithium-ion batteries; the advanced luminescent materials have been prepared by aggregation-induced emission (AIE) of intrinsically non-emissive molecules.

One of the challenges facing this fast-growing field of advanced materials is to develop a fundamental understanding of aggregation/self-assembly mechanisms, which will be addressed in this symposium. Contributions will include but are not limited to 1) Advances in the synthesis of advanced materials via aggregation or self-assembly pathways; 2) Investigations into aggregation or self-assembly mechanisms; 3) Observation of the aggregation or self-assembly pathways via in situ techniques; 4) Theoretical development on the particle-based crystallization; 5) Materials with aggregation-induced emission and their applications. The Symposium aims to bring the researchers updated information on the fundamental aggregation or self-assembly research through theory to experiments. It is also designed for experienced researchers to reinforce their knowledge on the scopes of development of new techniques, especially the state-of-the-art in situ characterization tools, to understand aggregation or self-assembly mechanisms.

Topics will include:

• Building advanced materials via macromolecules, cluster, or particle aggregation or self-assembly
• Observation of the aggregation or self-assembly pathways via in situ techniques
• Mechanism studies of aggregation or self-assembly pathways
• Control of morphology and size during synthesis of advanced materials via aggregation or self-assembly pathways
• Driving forces for particle interactions
• Fluorescent and phosphorescent AIE-based polymers, oligomers and molecules
• Design principles and operational mechanisms of the AIE based molecules
• Biocompatible AIE probes for sensing, imaging and other biomedical applications
• Applications of these advanced materials in areas of energy, environment, biomedicine, etc.
• Dynamic intervention with high-throughput and big data of aggregation and self-assembly mechanism

• A tutorial complementing this symposium is tentatively planned.

Invited Speakers (tentative):

• Qian Chen (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
• Jim De Yoreo (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA)
• Hongyou Fan (Sandia National Laboratories, USA)
• Kristen Fichthorn (The Pennsylvania State University, USA)
• Oleg Gang (Columbia University, USA)
• Yunning Hong (La Trobe University, Australia)
• Andrey Klymchenko (Université de Strasbourg, France)
• Gen-ichi Konishi (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)
• Nicholas Kotov (University of Michigan, USA)
• Bin Liu (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
• Zhaoming Liu (Zhejiang University, China)
• Thomas Müller (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany)
• Anjun Qin (South China University of Technology, China)
• Kevin Rosso (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA)
• Elena Sturm (Universität Konstanz, Germany)
• Kazuo Tanaka (Kyoto University, Japan)
• Youhong Tang (Flinders University, Australia)
• Dong Wang (Shenzhen University, China)
• Zheng Zhao (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China)
• Haimei Zheng (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA)

Symposium Organizers