Interview by Yuki Lei
The Macau Centre for Research and Development in Advanced Materials, established by the University of Macau (UM) with funding from the Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT), kicked off last month, focusing on three research directions, namely new energy materials, environmental protection materials, and healthcare materials.
The Macau Post Daily conducted an interview on Tuesday with Tang Zikang, director of the newly-established centre, on the UM campus about his 22-member team’s research directions.
Advanced materials are a spectrum of evolving technologies with proven potential and a revolutionary impact on fields like information and communications technology (ICT), energy and mobility, life sciences, healthcare, cosmetics, food, consumer goods, and manufacturing, according to the Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) website, which points out that advanced materials research aims to result in ground-breaking, sustainable and competitive products.
Tang said: “The materials that we [he and his team] will develop must be relatively cutting-edge, which can play a great role [in industrialisation]”, adding that in the experimental scientific research that his team has to do is to create “something new” based on the original materials foundation.
Tang underlined that each of his team’s experimental scientific research aims to invent materials in directions that are different to other research teams while, at the same time, paying a relatively large contribution to civil society, with its broad application in the market.
According to Tang, in order to better promote the industrialisation and application of the team’s scientific research results, his team has cooperated with research teams from various tertiary education institutions from the mainland such as China University of Technology, Zhejiang University, and Sun Yat-sen University.
During the interview, Tang briefly introduced some of his team’s scientific research results in the three directions as follows:
New energy materials
Tang said that his team has long started to study the conversion of light energy into electricity, adding that different to the existing solar cells, his team’s research direction puts special emphasis also on the storage of energy after generation, with the use of perovskite.
According to Wikipedia, perovskite is a calcium titanium oxide mineral composed of calcium titanate (chemical formula CaTiO3).
The new materials would be hard to industrialise in Macau due to its limited-sized area of just 33.3 square kilometres, said Tang, who was quick to add he believed that the development of the Guangdong-Macau In-depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin would give great help in the development of Macau’s high-tech industry, in conjunction with the local government’s “1+4” development strategy aims for appropriate economic diversification by promoting four main industries – big health, modern finance, high-tech, conventions and exhibitions, including culture and sport.
Environmental protection materials
In terms of environmental protection materials, Tang shared his team’s research achievement – foam concrete – which is strengthened by nanomaterials between the bubble barrier and has outstanding stability, excellent safety and fire protection performance and low cost compared with the same type of foam agent, he said.
According to Tang, the weight of foam concrete is only about one-third of the original cement which weighs the same as stone. He said that although its strength is slightly weaker than that of ordinary cement, it is still strong enough to be used in many situations, for example, the fourth Macau-Taipa bridge project.
Tang said that the substitute could reduce the amount of cement used.
Healthcare materials
Talking about his research direction in terms of a local new key industry – big health, Tang said that with the aim of achieving a cure for cancer, a new material technology was undergoing an experiment by his team, which is using edible citric acid as the main raw material, the aim being to combine it with patients’ cancer cells.
Tang said: “We want to do things that others will not do so that we can do some emblematic things for the University of Macau, and even make contributions to the Macau Special Administrative Region government.”
Macau Centre for Research and Development in Advanced Materials Director Tang Zikang talks to The Macau Post Daily during an interview at an exhibition hall displaying his team’s research achievements, on the Hengqin campus of the public University of Macau (UM) on Tuesday. – Photo: Yuki Lei
