Do the research of "standing on top of the sky"——Interview with Lv Jian, winner of the 2018 Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Award

China News Service, Hong Kong, June 8, 2018 Title: Doing research on "Standing on top of the sky" - Interview with Lu Jian, winner of the 2018 Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Award

China News Service reporter Ruan Xiao

"What we want to do is the research of 'standing on top of the sky', 'top of the sky', which refers to publishing cover articles in international authoritative journals, 'standing on the ground', which is to make these basic research quickly applied and grounded."

Recently, Lu Jian, chair professor of mechanical engineering at the City University of Hong Kong and winner of the 2018 Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Award, described his research work in this way when interviewed by a reporter from China News Agency.

Therefore, let the plane lose weight, make the car safer, let the 5G signal penetrate the mobile phone shell, let the bone plate implanted in the operation, bone nails naturally degrade, these seemingly unrelated topics, here in Lu Jian have intersected - the material to the extreme.

Taking the team's recent research and development of new electric vehicle energy absorption box technology as an example, Lu Jian explained that the energy absorption boxes of general electric vehicles on the market currently use ultra-high-strength steel as a material, and when a violent collision occurs, the extremely fast deceleration will pose a threat to the personal safety of the driver. However, "new technologies developed with nanomaterials reduce both weight, energy absorption and smaller speed." ”

In May last year, Lü Jian's research results, the world's first and strongest "duplex super-nano magnesium alloy" material related papers, were published in the journal Nature in the form of a cover article. This is also the first cover article published in the journal Nature in the field of structural materials in China.

The research team led by him has earlier successfully discovered a new method for manufacturing super-nano materials, which not only makes up for the shortcomings of the poor deformation ability of metal glass, low wear resistance of titanium alloys, low strength of magnesium alloys and fast degradation, but also greatly expands the overall scope of materials.

"In the past, most of the materials were metallic materials or non-gold materials, and super-nano materials allow us to get countless combinations of metal materials and non-gold materials, which brings more exotic physical and chemical properties, and also opens new doors for the preparation of super-nano materials with different properties." Lu Jian said.

Today's achievements stem from years of accumulation, in order to open this "new door", Lu Jian has actually been deeply engaged in the field of materials science for more than 30 years. His application and future contributions in the field of surface nanotechnology science and engineering have earned him the Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Award, the highest award in the field of engineering science and technology in China in 2018.

As a "new third class" student admitted to Peking University in 1978 after the state restored the college entrance examination system, Lu Jian recalled the time when he was young and still lamented a specific historical period, which created a special learning environment at that time.

"The students are all from all walks of life across the country, some are soldiers, some are journalists, some may have read the literature and then been admitted to the theory, but one thing is the same, that is, their desire to learn, the cherishing of hard-won learning opportunities."

The national college entrance examination in 2018 is in full swing, and for this door that many students regard as a "turning point in life", Lu Jian believes that doing academics should be a lifelong learning process.

"Doing research is a marathon, going to college is just a sprint, and the sprint champion may not be able to run in the front of the marathon in the end, the key is to see what you do after entering the university."

He took the field of material science he was engaged in as an example to explain that many materials, including steel, iron, etc., existed thousands of years ago, how to make "gold and silver" on the basis of "scrap copper and rotten iron", and use different smelting methods and technological developments to revitalize them, which is worth exhausting the entire academic career to pursue exploration. (End)