On January 8, 2019, the 2018 National Science and Technology Award Ceremony was held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the state XiJinping, Li Keqiang, Wang Huning and Han Zheng attended the ceremony. President Xi presented awards to the awardee representatives. PCOSS member Zheng Nanfeng was one of the representatives. His team’s research achievement, "Surface Coordination Chemistry of Metal Nanomaterials" won the second class prize of National Natural Science award, which was jointly completed by Professor Huang Xiaoqing, Professor Fu Gang (PCOSS member), Dr. Chen Guangxu and Dr.Yang Huayan. Zheng Nanfeng, Huang Xiaoqing and Fu Gang attended the award ceremony.

    The awarded achievement led by Prof. Nanfeng Zheng has carried out systematic studies on the surface coordination chemistry of metal nanomaterials. The research mainly focuses on the following threeaspects: (1) The development of effective strategies to control the surface /morphology of noble metal nanocrystals based on the concept of surface coordination chemistry. Small but strong ligands, such as CO and organicamines, are used to manipulate the surface energy and thus surface structure of metal nanocrystals. (2) Direct solution of coordination structures of typical ligands on surface of metal nanoparticles by using metal nanoclusters as model systems. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction is adopted to identify the total structures of metal nanoparticles which have been made truly monodisperse at the molecular level and crystallized into single crystals. (3) The molecular understanding of the intricate interfacial effects in the complicated metal nanomaterials systems. Model metal nanocatalysts with well-defined interfacesare fabricated to simplify the characterization of interfacial structures to enable the deep understanding.

    The research has already published 37 high-impact papers in journals including Science, Nat. Nanotech., Nat. Commun., J. Am. Chem.Soc., Angew. Chem., and Adv. Mater.. The eight representative publications have been cited by 1866 times by other researchers. The research has been highlighted many times by Nature,Nature China, and Chem. & Eng. News. Five of the eight representative papers are rated as the highly cited ESI papers. The research has made significant impacts in the community. The developed strategy to use small coordination molecules to control the surface structure and morphology of metal nanocrystals has been widely adopted. The concept of surface coordination chemistry of nanomaterials has been highly recognized in the field. The ultra-thin palladium nanosheets ("palladium blue") prepared by this research have been regarded as an important representative of two-dimensional nanomaterials and an important near-infrared photothermal therapeutic agent as well. The molecular structure of the first thiol-protected silver nanoparticle resolved by this research has been frequently cited and the developed noble metal-metal(hydrogen) oxide model nanocatalyst is considered as an important example to study the support effect of metal catalysts.

    Nanfeng Zheng, 41 year-old, was born in Fujian. He is the Yangtze River Scholar of the Ministryof Education of the People’s Republic of China (MOE) and the Distinguished Young Scholar of the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC). He has been engaged in the research of surface and interface chemistry of functional materials since 2007 and has devoted himself to understand the chemical properties of functional materials at the molecular level, so as to promote the applications of related materials in catalysis, energy, environmental protection and other fields.

    Prof. Nanfeng Zheng won the Chinese Youth Science and Technology Award in 2016 and the Youth Science Award from Ministry of Education(MOE) in 2017 for his great contribution to the research of surface chemistry of metal nanomaterials. He has undertaken several national key R&D projects, the NSFC key projects and enterprise cooperation R&D projects which have greatly promoted the research on the fundamental and application of functional nanomaterials.