Seminar Prof. Yun Liu, Australian National University

The determination of the atomic structure at different lengths scale to correlate structure and function of matters

Abstract

Polar functional materials are potentially very useful for the “smart” devices. Such materials are structurally very flexible, allowing various ion substitutions to tune their properties. On the other hand, the effect of such ion substitutions on the properties are not obvious since these ions can be structurally accommodated differently in local region, depending on their local chemistry environment. It is very important to understand the structural consequence of ion substitutions in such materials, which will provide a guidance for rational design of the ion substitution to tune the potential property. In this talk, the local structure of several typical materials will be presented. The relationship between the local structure and property as well as the strategies for optimal polarisation-related property will be discussed. 

Professor Yun Liu 

Yun Liu received her PhD degree from the Xian Jiaotong University in 1997. She has since held the AIST Fellow and STA Fellow positions at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Kyushu, Japan (1998-2001) before the commencement of her Postdoctoral Fellow position at the Australian National University in 2001. She is currently a tenured Professor, the Head of the Functional Materials Research Group at the Australian National University.
She was awarded fellowships of the AIST (1998-1999) and the STA(1999-2001, now renamed as the Fellow of JSPS) in Japan, the Australian Research Council (ARC) Queen Elisabeth II (2006-2010) and ARC Future Fellow (2011-2015) in Australia. She is a fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics (FAIP) and a Certified Materials Professional (CMatP) of the Materials of Australia (MMA). She is also a member of the Society of Crystallographers in Australia and New Zealand (MSCANZ) as well as the Society of Australian Ceramics. She has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal papers with two in “Nature Materials”. She has also received several scientific awards.
Liu's group aims to use materials chemistry as a tool to design and develop novel functional materials for uses in electronic components, smart devices, energy conversion and storage. The main research direction is to explore the correlation between local structure and property of functional polar materials though diffraction techniques, including electron diffraction, neutron diffraction and synchrotron radiation, and then to further optimize the existing or develop the new functional materials.