Lei Bao is currently a Senior Lecturer in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at RMIT University, Australia. She received her PhD in the College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences (CCMS) of Wuhan University, China and was awarded the 2014 Australia Endeavour Fellowship to pursue her postdoctoral studies in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She held an RMIT Vice-Chancellor Fellowship in 2015 and is a recipient of the prestigious Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Her multidisciplinary work is centred on solving energy, environment and health-related challenges through controllable design and engineering of nanomaterials. The research team she leads at RMIT focuses on surface and colloidal engineering with directions in confined nanocarbon synthesis and assembly for energy conversions as well as in the development of biocompatible multifunctional nanocomposites for biomedical applications. They can be found on Twitter @NanocarbonLei, on LinkedIn and online via their website.
Read Lei’s Emerging Investigator article http://xlink.rsc.org/?doi=10.1039/D2SM00557C
How do you feel about Soft Matter as a place to publish research on this topic?
Soft Matter provides an excellent platform for researchers from physics, chemistry, materials and engineering to exchange thoughts and discoveries. Our research on nanocarbon assembly lies in the intersection area of fluid dynamics, colloidal engineering and interfacial science. I feel very excited to share our findings with the interdisciplinary readership of Soft Matter and hope it will spark more discussion and collaboration on this research topic.
What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?
Incorporating nanocarbon materials into electronic devices has been considered a promising approach for developing next-generation devices with high efficiency and high sensitivity. The way to integrate these nanomaterials into the device is critical for functionalities and properties. I am excited to see how our research could deepen the understanding of physical chemistry phenomena, leading to the development of a simple and robust technique to controllably arrange nanocarbons into different structures on surfaces for potential device fabrications. For the assembly of nanocarbon materials with ultrasmall dimensions, such as a few nanometers-sized carbon dots, the biggest challenge is to employ a direct visualisation technique to understand the dynamics of their assembly process.
In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?
The ultimate goal of nanomaterial assembly is to precisely control and engineer the structures for design applications. Hence, the mechanism behind the assembly process and how the assembly structures induce different properties are the important questions to be addressed.
Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?
Research is fun and can be challenging sometimes so find your support systems, such as your colleagues or mentors, who are willing to share their experiences and provide genuine feedback to you.
