Opening remarks
Jin Chang Wuhua Tianbao, RenJie Di Ling. On the one hand, the sons and daughters of China from all over the world rushed to Jinchang to build Jinchang, giving birth to the "Jinchang spirit" of "arduous struggle, harmonious progress."; on the other hand, groups of Jinchang students went out of their homes and went to the whole country and the world, and a group of experts, scholars, and scientific and technological workers represented by Li Can, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Li Hengnian, an expert in aerospace measurement and control, and Gou Xiaohua, a distinguished professor of Yangtze River scholars, have emerged in the forefront of science and technology, who have diligently explored and cut through thorns and thorns, and have continuously made new breakthroughs in major scientific and technological fields. They are not only the pride of Jinchang and Gansu, but also the pride of the motherland!
In order to carry forward the spirit of scientists, strengthen contacts and exchanges, solicit opinions and suggestions, and obtain intellectual support, on the occasion of the fifth "National Day of Scientific and Technological Workers," the Propaganda Department of the Jinchang Municipal CPC Committee and the Jinchang Science and Technology Association, after half a year of meticulous planning and preparation, specially opened a column entitled "'Jinchang People' at the Frontier of Science and Technology," focusing on publicizing and reporting their innovative spirit and advanced deeds based on their posts, working hard, bravely climbing high peaks, and daring to be the first, and creating a good atmosphere of respect for science and talents in the city. Inspire more scientific and technological workers to blaze new trails, forge ahead, and strive to promote the high-quality economic and social development of our city.
Li Can
Li Can, Yongchang Zhuwangbaoren, Doctor of Science, Researcher and Doctoral Supervisor of Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Developing Countries, Academician of the European Academy of Sciences, Successive Research Group Leaders, Director of the State Key Laboratory of Catalysis Foundations, Deputy Director of the Institute, Director of the Chinese Catalysis Committee, One of the Founders of the Asia-Pacific Catalysis Society, Chairman of the Council; Former Chairman of the International Catalysis Council (the first scientist from developing countries was elected); Chairman of the 16th International Conference on Catalysis; Director of the Chinese Spectroscopic Society and Director of the Optical Scattering Society of the Chinese Physical Society. He is also the dean of the School of Materials and Chemistry of the University of Science and Technology of China, and a double-employed academician of Lanzhou University.
01 Study hard and enter the road of scientific research
Li Can was born in a natural disaster in Zhuwangbao Town, Yongchang County, to an ordinary peasant family. After completing primary, junior high, and high schools during the Cultural Revolution, he took the college entrance examination after the end of the Cultural Revolution, and was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to enter Zhangye Normal College (now Hexi College), and was sent to Shaanxi Normal University for further study.
In 1983, Li Can was admitted to the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to pursue a postgraduate degree, during which he was awarded a UNESCO scholarship to conduct his doctoral dissertation at Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan as a Sino-Japanese joint graduate student. During his time in Japan, his research project was on ternary catalysts for automobile exhaust.
In 1988, Li Canxuecheng returned to China to enter the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, put into the domestic intense scientific research work, and soon won the "Youth Science Fund" newly established by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, supporting his research on methane oxidation activation, which was also the first independent scientific research project obtained by Li Can. After three years of efforts, through isotope tracing and variable temperature in situ infrared spectroscopy technology, the activated adsorption state formed by methane on the surface of the catalyst and its structural distortion phenomenon were observed, and the research results attracted wide attention from international peers, and won the second prize of natural science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1993, and he personally won the "Chinese Young Scientist Award".
In the same year, Li Can was promoted to researcher. In order to broaden his academic horizons and fully understand the international frontiers of catalysis, he went to the United States to continue to engage in in-depth scientific research, and chose the Northwest University Catalysis Center, the pilgrimage of the international catalytic community. Li Can uses every learning opportunity in the school to fully understand American science education and catalytic research. He was undistracted at Northwestern University, buried his head in research, and 3 years rushed by, returning to China with rich research results.
02 Overcome difficulties and win the International Catalysis Award
In 1996, Li Can returned to Dalian Institute of Chemicals and the first research topic he carried out was to start the catalytic characterization of ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy in China. Faced with the shortage of funds and personnel, Li Can applied for the financial support of the Outstanding Youth Fund of the State Foundation of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, temporarily solving the difficulty of funding shortage. After more than two years of hard work, Li Can overcame various problems encountered in the development of ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy technology one by one, and finally successfully obtained the ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy of the industrial molecular sieve catalyst at the end of 1998, marking the successful development of the first ultraviolet Raman spectrometer in China. Due to its high sensitivity and high selectivity, ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy can study catalytic materials and catalytic reactions under aqueous, gaseous, high temperature and high pressure conditions, and Li Can quickly applied this new technology to solve major problems in catalytic science.
Due to the innovation of this technology and the importance of the characterization of catalytic materials, it was highly praised at home and abroad immediately after the successful development, and the technology of ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy won the Invention Award of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Second Prize of the National Science and Technology Invention Award in 1999. On the basis of a number of basic scientific research progress, in 2011, the catalytic research results of ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy won the second prize of the National Natural Science Award, and Li Can won the International Catalysis Award for his ultraviolet Raman catalysis research work (once every four years, one at a time, the highest award in the field of international catalysis, and the first time chinese scientists have won this award). Later, UV Raman spectroscopy research expanded from catalysis research to material characterization and other broader fields, and most of the spectral characterization laboratories in the world were equipped with ultraviolet and medium ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy. In recent years, Li Can has successfully applied ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy to Deep Sea Exploration in China; on the basis of the research and development of ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy, he has successfully developed the first deep ultraviolet Raman spectrometer and the first short-wavelength chiral Raman spectrometer in the world.
While conducting catalytic research, Li Can has been concerned about China's ecological and environmental problems, one of the reasons for the formation of air pollution and smog is the oxidation of fuel oil nitrogen and sulfur content components oxidation tail gas emissionS NOx, SOx, in order to solve this problem, he laid out the research on ultra-deep desulfurization of fuel oil at the beginning of his return to China.
Li Can led the research team to explore several routes of oxidative desulfurization, adsorption desulfurization and new catalytic hydrogenation and desulfurization. After more than ten years of efforts, the application of oil ultra-deep desulfurization basic research results finally formed gasoline and diesel ultra-deep desulfurization two industrial technologies and were popularized and applied, in 2015 in Shandong Hengyuan Petrochemical, 400,000 tons / year scale production of China V standard gasoline industrial successful start-up, in 2016 and Yanchang Petroleum Group cooperation, successfully developed 200,000 tons / year China V standard diesel production technology and successful industrialization. After the demonstration of industrialization, these technologies have been promoted and applied in enterprises in many places, making contributions to winning the blue sky defense war.
03 Forge ahead and face the problem of photocatalysis
Since the Industrial Revolution, due to the excessive exploitation of fossil resources such as coal, oil and natural gas, a large number of pollutants and huge amounts of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases have been emitted into the atmospheric environment, which has seriously damaged the atmospheric ecological balance formed for hundreds of millions of years, resulting in climate change, frequent extreme weather, ocean acidification, accelerated extinction of biological species, and more dangerously, the greenhouse effect has led to an increase in the temperature of the earth's atmospheric environment, the melting of polar glaciers has accelerated, and the sea level has risen. The scientific utilization of solar energy is a way to fundamentally solve the problems of human ecological environment, but this is a worldwide problem.
In 1999 and 2000, Li Can took advantage of the opportunity of being a short-term visiting professor at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom and Japan, and carried out academic investigations to Europe and Japan with these thoughts. In 2001, Li Can made a major decision in his scientific research career: to shift the focus of ongoing traditional catalytic research to the research of renewable energy represented by solar energy, and decided to start the research of solar photocatalytic decomposition of water to hydrogen.
Solar photocatalytic decomposition of water to hydrogen research has been tried since the 1970s, but due to the great challenge of this topic, the progress is slow, the relevant research teams in the field at home and abroad have withdrawn and turned, and few people continue to adhere to research at the beginning of this century. At the beginning of the photocatalytic research, the equipment and funds were not settled. However, due to the fact that this is a strategic vision of the research direction, fortunately, it has been funded by the National Foundation Of China, the Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Science and Technology, so that the research of solar photocatalysis has developed and has been adhered to until now.
Experimental work on photocatalytic water decomposition has been initiated, but the greater difficulty is the condensation of core scientific problems in this field. Although many scientists at home and abroad have done a lot of exploratory research, the key scientific problems of photocatalytic decomposition of water to hydrogen are not very clear, and for various reasons, research in this field is very slow. Therefore, at the beginning of the study, Li Can's main energy focused on identifying the most critical factors that determine the photocatalytic system, and after about three or four years of exploration efforts, he basically figured out the three bottlenecks that determined the performance of the photocatalytic system. Clarifying the basic scientific problems, his subsequent research has deployed research topics in three aspects: efficient photo-capture materials, photogenerated charge separation mechanisms, and efficient cocatalysts. By around 2008, progress had been made in wide-spectrum light-trapping materials, charge separation mechanisms and dual-cocatalysts, and the international photocatalytic field began to pay attention to their research.
Photocatalytic decomposition of water and carbon dioxide conversion is the process of natural photosynthesis of the Taoist method, so Li Can attaches special importance to learning from natural photosynthesis, imitating the principle of natural photosynthesis, for the first time in the world to build natural photosynthesis PSII. (photosystem II.) and artificial photocatalyst hybrid system, with the help of PSII.'s efficient water oxidation function and artificial photocatalyst proton reduction hydrogen production function, successfully realized the process of complete decomposition of water release hydrogen and oxygen release, and then further coupled PSII. and photoelectrochemical system. This enables an efficient water complete decomposition process. In terms of basic research on photocatalysis, a number of landmark achievements in this field have been achieved: the synthesis of nitrogen-containing sulfur-containing complex semiconductor photocaping materials, the light capture range has been expanded to 600nm; the double-cocatalyst strategy has been proposed, and the quantum efficiency of photocatalytic proton reduction hydrogen production reaction has reached 93%, which is still a world record; the heterogeneous junction charge separation theory has been developed; and the efficiency of multiple photocatalytic systems has reached the highest international level. The progress of these basic research has attracted the attention of the international academic community, Li Can has been invited to make a keynote speech at the Gordon Conference of the International Top Academic Conference for many times, and has been elected as the chairman of the Golden Conference on Solar Fuel, and has been awarded the Photochemistry Award issued by the Japan Photochemical Society; due to the outstanding work in the field of international photocatalysis, he has twice participated in and presided over the CS3 Five Chemical Society (China, Japan, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom) Summit Forum and formed an international white paper on solar energy research released around the world. It has played a role in promoting international solar research.
Li Can uses the electrocatalytic decomposition of renewable energy such as solar energy to develop the most active, long-lived, and inexpensive electrocatalyst of the alkaline system, so that the efficiency of electrolyzed water is increased from the traditional 60% to more than 80%, and has developed a catalyst for carbon dioxide hydrogenation to synthesize methanol, based on these two technologies to make breakthroughs, integrated photovoltaic - electrolyzed water to green hydrogen technology and carbon dioxide hydrogenation to synthesize methanol technology, In 2020, the world's first industrial demonstration of liquid sunlight methanol synthesis was successfully completed in Lanzhou New District, Gansu Province, which laid the foundation for large-scale solar fuel synthesis, and the success of the liquid sunlight methanol synthesis process has attracted great attention from all parties and is considered to be an important path to achieve carbon peak carbon neutrality.
04 Sink your heart and do your research in a down-to-earth manner
In recent years, Li Can has focused a lot of energy on the catalytic research of solar artificial photosynthesis, in order to continue to make progress in this challenging field, Li Can has devoted a lot of effort to cultivating young talents and leading the team, and has prepared a solar energy research center and solar energy research group at the Dalian Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and he is both an academic leader and a mentor. He spends most of his time with graduate students and postdocs, and most of his energy is spent on bringing young people. Li Can instructed the students to hold group meetings once a week, and for 20 years they have persisted as usual. Now that the research team has more people, Li Can has divided them into several groups. Students from different research directions discuss, communicate and integrate, and inspire each other. For the students' experimental data, Li Can personally approved it, and all the articles he was responsible for had to be personally checked and revised.
"A person's energy is limited, and it is not easy to do one or two research tasks in a lifetime. But these two studies, in order to do a good job and achieve international success, we must devote ourselves wholeheartedly. "In order to concentrate on scientific research, Li Can resigned many social positions and part-time jobs, and he wanted to spend as much time as possible in the laboratory and in discussions with students." If we want to get Chinese science up, we must have a large number of scientists who can work on the front line. For scientific workers, "to engage in scientific research, we must have the determination to sink down and persevere, otherwise it is difficult to achieve substantial and large results." ”
Speaking of his experience of insisting on doing scientific research for so many years, Li Can said that the first thing is to choose a good direction or topic, and to choose those directions or topics that contribute greatly to the country, to mankind, and to the field of science. Secondly, we must pay attention to the scientific method, and decide the research plan to overcome difficult problems according to our own interests, knowledge base, accumulation of experience and the nature of the topic. We must also persevere and persevere. "I rarely do research that is short and fast, nor do I blindly chase hot spots, and starting a research project often goes through long-term thinking and repeated and careful argumentation." Once the selection is correct, we must persist, have determination, and do not give up easily. It is necessary to have a rigorous and down-to-earth study style. It is necessary to pay attention to the interdisciplinary integration and cooperation at home and abroad, be good at drawing on reference, be good at learning new things, and not engage in scientific research in isolation. ”
Li Can has continuously climbed new heights on the road of scientific research, achieved fruitful results, and won a series of honors: in 2003 he was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (one of the youngest academicians of the year), in 2004 he won the world's highest award in catalysis - the International Catalysis Award; in 2005 he was elected as an academician of the "Third World Academy of Sciences", in 2008 he was elected as a foreign academician of the "European Academy of Humanities and Natural Sciences", and was elected as the chairman of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Catalysis; in 2014, he won the China Catalysis Achievement Award. In 2016, he won the "First National Outstanding Scientific and Technological Talent Award" at the Third Science and Technology Conference, the "Japan Photocatalysis Award" in 2017, the "China Spectral Achievement Award" in 2018, the "Asia-Pacific Catalysis Achievement Award" in 2019, and the "Innovation Mission Leader" of international clean energy in 2020.
As a scientific and technological leader who went out from Jinchang, Li Can has always paid attention to the development and changes of his hometown. "My parents passed away many years ago, and after my parents died, I went back to my hometown less often, but I am from the northwest, and Jinchang will always be my hometown." Li Can sent a message that he hoped that Jinchang would attach importance to the protection of the ecological environment in economic and social development, increase investment in rural education, let the traditional culture of rural areas continue to live, and build his hometown into a new rural beautiful home that integrates adults and nature, tradition and modernity.
(This column is sponsored by the Propaganda Department of the CPC Jinchang Municipal Committee and the Jinchang Science and Technology Association)
Text: Reporter Hou Yinjuan
Image source: Jinchang Science and Technology Association
Source: Jinchang Daily WeChat public account
Editor: Jiao Duoqian Teng Xianliang
Editor-in-charge: He Jiyu
Editor-in-Chief: Wang Jun