[News from the news center] On May 30, theresults of2018 Tan Kah Kee Science Award and Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award were announced at Beijing Convention Center. YSU Prof. Tian Yongjun won the Tan Kah Kee Technical Science Award. The winning project was “Synthesis Artificial Materials Harder than Natural Diamond”. It is the first time for academicswhowon this award in Hebei Province. Liu He, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council, and Bai Chunli, President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences among other related leaders presented awards to the winners.
Prof. Tian reported in AIRAPT26
For years, Tian Yongjun and his collaborators have systematically studied the hardening mechanism of covalent materials and established a theoretical model for hardening. It has been found that polycrystalline covalent materials could continue to harden at the nano level, which breaks through the traditional knowledge of material hardening. This finding has greatly revolutionized the approaches of improving the hardness of super-hard materials and indicates a new direction for its development. Based on this finding, a new idea is proposed: the ultra-high performance could be achieved through creating ultrafine nanocrystals in the two ultra-hard materials – diamond and cubic boron nitride.
Through the direct transition of onion structure carbon and boron nitride precursors under high temperature and high pressure, ultrafine nano twin-crystal diamond and cubic boron nitride were synthesized. The nano twinning microstructure improves the hardness, toughness and thermal stability of both materials. The hardness and toughness of nano twin-crystal diamond is as high as twice that of natural diamond, which greatly promotes the research in the field of high-performance super-hard materials and is expected to bring about technological changes in the processing industry and high-pressure science.
Prof. Tian and his assistant Prof. Zhao Zhisheng (Photos above bySchool of Materials Science and Engineering)
The Tan Kah Kee Science Prize is a scientific award named after Mr. Tan Kah Kee, a famous patriotic Chinese descendant who had made outstanding contributions to the development of science and education in China. It was developed from the original Tan Kah Kee Award established in 1988. Since the establishment of the Tan Kah Kee Award in 1988, a total of 8 awards and prize have been granted. A total of 63 outstanding Chinese scientists have won this award. The winners of the National Supreme Science and Technology Awards Wu Wenjun, Wang Xuan, Huang Kun, Liu Dongsheng, Wu Mengchao, Ye Duzheng, Li Zhensheng, Zhang Cunhao and Zhao Zhongxian once won the Tan Kah Kee Award.
In February 2003, with the consent of the State Council, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Bank of China jointly invested in the establishment of the Tan Kah Kee Science Prize Foundation and established the Tan Kah Kee Science Prize to award outstanding scientists who have made significant original scientific and technological achievements in China in the near future. The award consists of six awards: Mathematical Science Award, Chemical Science Award, Life Science Award, Earth Science Award, Information Technology Science Award, and Technology Science Award. Once every two years, 31 outstanding scientists have obtained Tan Kah Kee Science prize. In 2010, the Tan Kah Kee Science Prize Foundation launched the prize of Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award. The award also includes six awards: Mathematical Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Life Sciences, Earth Sciences, Information Technology Science and Technology Science. Once every two years, a total of 20 young scientists and technicians won the Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award
Tian Yongjun Profile
Tian Yongjun was born in Heilongjiang in March 1963. He is a materialist, a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering,YSU. He graduated from Harbin University of Science and Technology in 1984, received his MA degree in engineering from Northeast Heavy Machinery College (nowYSU) in 1987, and received PhD degree from the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1994. In 1996, as a Humboldt scholar he was engaged at the University of Jena in Germany for a two-year collaborative study. In 2002, he was awarded the National Outstanding Youth Science Fund. In 2008, he was awarded the Innovation Research Group of the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
From 1999 to 2016, he served as Dean of the School of Materials Science and Engineering of YSU, and was elected as Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2017. He is a Deputy Editor of Science China Materials, and editor of journals: Journal of Materials Science & Technology, Journal of Materiomics among others. His mainly research interests is the design and synthesis of new metastable materials. He has published more than 300 SCI index papers in journals such as Nature, Science Advances, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Physical Review Letters, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Advanced Materials. His SCI papers were cited more than 5,000 times. He was awarded one second prize of National Natural Science Prize (2011), two MoE Natural Science first Prizes (2000, 2008), and Hebei Province Science and Technology Outstanding Contribution Award (2016). He also had invention patents 15 item both at home and abroad. His research achievements were selected for the “Top Ten Progress in China Science” and “Top Ten Scientific and Technological Progress in Chinese Universities” in 2013 and 2014.
Website of Tan Kah Kee Science Prize:http://www.tsaf.ac.cn/index.html
(Translated by Liu Ruo)
