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Dr Yao Lu

Yao

Senior Lecturer

Email: yao.lu@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 6627
Room Number: Joseph Priestley Building, Room G.02

Profile

I am Yao Lu, a material scientist with educational background both in Materials Chemistry (PhD) and Mechanical Engineering (Master of Engineering in Dalian University of Technology). Before joining QMUL, I obtained my PhD in UCL Chemistry (2017) followed by postdoctoral research in UCL Mechanical Engineering. I have broad interests in functional materials, and I am very keen to collaborate with both academic and industry to develop and transfer new knowledge and technology.

Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in collaborations or studying a PhD programme in my group.

Research

Research Interests:

Research projects

  • Super-durable, lotus leaf inspired superhydrophobic surfaces - Materials design, synthesis, characterisation and applications in self-cleaning, anti-icing, anti-corrosion etc.
  • Mechanically/chemically durable membrane/foam/filter for oil-water separation - Materials design, synthesis, characterisation and applications in separating water and immiscible oils/organic solvents such as corn oil, crude oil, toluene, chloroform etc.
  • Pitcher plant inspired omniphobic slippery liquid infused porous surfaces - Materials design, synthesis, characterisation and applications in anti-fouling and anti-icing.
  • Superhydrophilic, photocatalytic and self-cleaning coatings - Materials design, synthesis, characterisation and applications in photodegradation of organic pollutant on the surfaces.
  • Computational intelligence assisted understanding and designing advanced functional materials.
  • Particle interaction measurements in liquids using colloidal probe techniques to study local rheology of particle suspensions.

Publications

Selected Publications

  • Y. Lu, S. Sathasivam, J. Song, C. R. Crick, C. J. Carmalt, I. P. Parkin, Robust self-cleaning surfaces that function when exposed to either air or oil, Science 2015, 347, 1132–1135.
  • X. Zhang, B. Ding, R. Cheng, S. C. Dixon, Y. Lu* (corresponding author), Computational intelligence assisted understanding of nature-inspired superhydrophobic behavior, Adv. Sci. 2018, 5, 1700520.
  • Y. Lu, S. Sathasivam, J. Song, F. Chen, W. Xu, C. J. Carmalt, I. P. Parkin, Creating superhydrophobic mild steel surfaces for water proofing and oil-water separation, J. Mater. Chem. A 2014, 2, 11628–11634.

Supervision

Current PhD opportunities

I am currently recruiting self-funded and/or government funded (e.g. CSC Scholarship) PhD students. Please send your CV to my email yao.lu@qmul.ac.uk if you are interested in any of my research projects.

PhD supervision

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