On September 24th, the Hong Kong English media South China Morning Post revealed that a top Chinese scientist known as the "father of nanogenerators" has ended his decades long career in the United States and returned to his homeland China to conduct research on nanoscience and nanotechnology.
Wang Zhonglin, born in 1961, is a pioneer in the field of nanoenergy research. He has been working in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology for nearly 30 years, and on the college's personal page, it is written that Wang Zhonglin is "regarded as a pioneer and leader in the global field of nanoscience and nanotechnology with his outstanding creativity and productivity." His most outstanding contributions in scientific research are nanogenerators and self powered sensors, which have opened up the technological potential for wireless devices that can be self powered without batteries.
Wang Zhonglin was born in Pucheng County, Shaanxi Province in 1961. In 1978, he was admitted to the Northwest Institute of Telecommunications Engineering (now known as Xi'an University of Electronic Science and Technology). In 1982, he was selected to participate in the Sino US Joint Training Program for Physics Graduate Students (CUSPEA) advocated by Professor Li Zhengdao, and went to Arizona State University in the United States to study nanoscience. In July 1987, he obtained a doctoral degree in physics. Afterwards, he studied and worked at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Cavendish Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States. In 1995, Wang Zhonglin joined Georgia Institute of Technology and has been working there ever since.
In 2003, Wang Zhonglin was elected as an academician of the European Academy of Sciences, in 2009, he was elected as a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2019, he was elected as an international academician of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, in 2022, he was elected as an academician of the European Academy of Engineering, and in the same year, he was elected as an academician of the American National Academy of Inventors. In 2018, Professor Wang Zhonglin won the Eni Prize, the highest award in the world energy industry, becoming the first Chinese scientist to receive this award. In 2019, Professor Wang Zhonglin was awarded the Albert Einstein World Science Prize, becoming the first Chinese scientist to receive the award.
According to Google Scholar statistics, Professor Wang Zhonglin's paper has been cited over 300000 times, with an H-index of 267, ranking first in the world in terms of total citations and H-index in materials science worldwide. In the latest issue of the world's "Standardized Citation Index All Science Author Database" jointly released by Elsevier, the world's largest academic publisher, and Stanford University in the United States, Professor Wang Zhonglin ranks second in the overall ranking (career impact ranking) and is the only Chinese scientist among the top 100 scientists. In terms of annual ranking (single year scientific influence ranking), Professor Wang Zhonglin ranks first in the world, which is also his fifth consecutive year of annual ranking since 2020.
contribution is the establishment of nanogenerators and self powered sensors; Pioneering two major disciplines, piezoelectric electronics and piezoelectric optoelectronics, and leading the fundamental research of third-generation semiconductor technology.
In addition, in January 2022, Professor Wang Zhonglin published a paper in the journal Materials Today, which extended the Maxwell's equations. The extended Maxwell's equations he established successfully extended electromagnetic field theory to the case of moving media, laying the theoretical foundation for the electrodynamics of moving media.
Professor Zhonglin's research and breakthroughs in the development of nanogenerators have laid the principles and technical roadmap for obtaining mechanical energy from environmental and biological systems to power mobile sensors. He first proved that the nanogenerator originated from Maxwell's displacement current, revitalizing the application of Maxwell's equations in energy and sensors, 155 years after the invention of electromagnetic waves based on displacement current (1865). His research on self powered nano systems has inspired academic and industrial efforts to collect environmental energy for micro nano systems on a global scale, which has become a significant discipline for future sensor networks and the Internet of Things. He introduced the piezoelectric gate controlled charge transfer process to manufacture strain gate transistors, creating new concepts such as "piezoelectric transistors" and "piezoelectric phototransistors" in the fields of electronics, optoelectronics, sensors, and energy science, and conducting pioneering research. Piezoelectric transistors have important applications in intelligent MEMS/NEMS, nanorobots, human-machine electronic interfaces, and sensors. He also invented and pioneered in-situ techniques for measuring the mechanical and electrical properties of single nanotubes/nanowires in transmission electron microscopy (TEM).
In an interview with China Science Journal last month, Wang Zhonglin referred to CUSPEA as the "place where his dream began". For me personally, CUSPEA is an important turning point in my research career, and Mr. Li Zhengdao's most significant contribution is opening a 'gateway to the world' for Chinese students Wang Zhonglin said.
According to him, CUSPEA's organizational liaison work in the United States is personally handled by Li Zhengdao. Li Zhengdao's proposal to establish a youth class, establish a postdoctoral system, and create talent programs such as CUSPEA has made immeasurable contributions to China. He is not only a great scientist, but also a great educator. He has always been my role model, and now I am also trying my best to cultivate more students, hoping to use what I have learned to build a platform for young students.
Georgia Institute of Technology also announced earlier this month that it had withdrawn from a nearly 8-year cooperative project due to unreasonable sanctions from the United States. On September 6th, the college announced on its official website that due to Tianjin University being on the list of entities sanctioned by the US government, they will withdraw from their cooperative educational institution in Shenzhen, Tianjin University Georgia Institute of Technology Shenzhen College, and terminate their research and education partnership with Tianjin University and the Shenzhen Municipal Government in China.