China: A Big Player in a Small World

Nanoscience and nanotechnology measure and manipulate matter on the nanometer scale, 10 meters. To put that in scale, the diameter of a human hair and the thickness of one sheet of newspaper are each about 100,000 nm. It is very, very, very small! Although nano as a concept is still unknown to most nonscientists around the world, the Chinese public is already enraptured with the nano concept. Nanomaterials show new, unusual, and sometimes totally different properties compared to their bulk ones. Nanosized gold displays tunable colors, a lower melting point, and surprising catalytic activity. In fact, nano is already embedded throughout our day-to-day lives. Sunscreens with high sun protection factor (SPF) generally contain TiO2 or ZnO nanoparticles to absorb ultraviolet (UV) light. In nature, the strength of our teeth, lotus leaves’ ability to self-clean, and the superadhesion of gecko feet are all attributed to unique micro/nanostructures. My first exposure to nanoscience came during the 1980s when I was a graduate student in Jilin University. At that time, I did not understand the term nano; nanomaterials were not yet popular and were not even called nano at the time, referenced instead as “ultrafine” particles. While in graduate school, beautiful ultrasmall electron microscopy images quickly drew my attention. I started to work on the synthesis of pillared clays and related catalysts. Their unique structures, high surface areas, large interlayer spacing (>2 nm), and good catalytic activities immediately drew me into the fantastic “nanoworld”, from whence I have never stopped being fascinated. My home country of China is one of the pioneering countries that initiated nanoscience and nanotechnology research. Over the past decades, Chinese nanoscientists have made a number of important breakthroughs in various fields of emerging fundamental research and technology applications of nano. The Jianguo Hou group at the University of Science and Technology of China demonstrated plasmonenhanced Raman imaging with spatial resolution below one nanometer (0.5 nm), resolving the inner structure and surface configuration of a single molecule. Chinese scientists from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) developed highly efficient nanocatalysts, which can make a direct, nonoxidative high conversion of methane, exclusively to ethylene and other organic molecules. Yanlin Song and co-workers from the Institute of Chemistry, CAS, developed a pollution-free green plate technology using controllable features of functional hydrophilic/lipophilic nanomaterials with digital technology for the next generation of green nanoprinting. This advanced technology has eradicated contamination, lowered costs, and gained a better printing effect compared with the traditional techniques, leading the print industry into a new age of greenization and digitalization. The Shoushan Fan group from Tsinghua University developed superaligned carbon nanotube arrays, which can easily be converted into continuous, transparent, and highly conductive films for various applications, including carbon nanotube touch screens on mobile phones commercialized in 2012, bringing high impact results in the industrial field. Today, with these types of research outcomes in nano, more and more Chinese researchers are breaking into the list of the world’s top scientists. China is also one of the world’s top investors in nanoscience. Prior to the turn of the twenty-first century, the investment was small, and focused mainly on nanomaterials, supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST). The growth in Chinese investment came when the government issued the “National Medium and Long-Term Science and Technology Development Plan” in 2006, where nanoscience was highlighted as one of the key development areas in China. The MOST supported more than 150 projects on nanotechnology between 2006 and 2015, involving tens of millions of US dollars each on diverse research areas such as nanomaterials, nanodevices, nanoenergy,