About State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers

State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers

Overview at Fudan University in Shanghai

The State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers is in the Department of Macromolecular Science at Fudan University in Shanghai, at 2005 Songhu Road according to the departmental record used for this profile. It was founded in 2011 and is the national platform for a polymer discipline at Fudan that dates to 1958. Its name expresses a specific research philosophy: molecular engineering, meaning that the properties of a polymer material are pursued by designing and controlling structure at the molecular level, then following the consequences through assembly, processing and device performance.

A Springer volume devoted to the department, The Research Development on Molecular Engineering of Polymers, states that all its contributing authors are faculty members of the Department of Macromolecular Science and that the book summarises the department's contributions over the preceding decade across polymer chemistry, polymer physics, polymers for energy storage and conversion, and polymer processing. Topics highlighted include precise protein self-assembly, glycochemical biology, fibre polymer batteries, energy transduction, phase-field and self-consistent-field theory, and polymer condensed-matter physics. That breadth is the laboratory's working context.

The laboratory should not be confused with a single research group. Individual principal investigators lead groups on topics from block-copolymer self-assembly to charged polymer interfaces, but the state key laboratory is the shared national platform that houses and connects those groups within the department, giving polymer synthesis, physics, engineering and applications a common institutional home at Fudan.

From a 1958 discipline to a department and a laboratory

Polymer science at Fudan University was established in 1958, according to the introduction to the Department of Macromolecular Science published by Springer. It evolved from an early focus on polymer synthesis into a comprehensive system that now includes polymer physics and polymer engineering as well as chemistry. That expansion matters because modern polymer problems rarely stay inside one subfield: a new material must be synthesised, its chain structure and condensed state understood, and its processing into a fibre, film, membrane or device engineered.

The Department of Macromolecular Science was founded in 1993, formalising that comprehensive discipline in a dedicated department. The State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers followed in 2011. The Springer introduction lists six major research areas for the discipline: polymer physics, polymer chemistry, polymer engineering, intelligent polymers, biological polymers, and photoelectric and energy polymers. It also records numerous national awards and the cultivation of large numbers of innovative talents during the discipline's development.

The 30th anniversary of the department was marked by the Springer research volume, whose editors and contributors used the occasion to present molecular engineering as the paradigm linking Fudan's work. Readers should therefore date the laboratory from 2011, the department from 1993, and the underlying Fudan polymer discipline from 1958, rather than collapsing those three distinct milestones into a single founding date.

Polymer chemistry and physics as twin foundations

Polymer chemistry in the laboratory's setting concerns how macromolecules are made: polymerisation reactions, control of molecular weight and architecture, block copolymers, and the introduction of functional groups that determine later behaviour. Polymer physics concerns how those chains behave once made: how they fold, entangle, phase-separate, crystallise and assemble, and how those structures determine mechanical, optical and transport properties. Molecular engineering joins the two by treating synthesis as the first step in designing a final material property.

A concrete example is the laboratory's work on block-copolymer phase diagrams. A 2025 paper in the Chinese Journal of Polymer Science by Qing-Shu Dong, Wei-Hua Li and colleagues, affiliated to the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers and Fudan's Research Center of AI for Polymer Science, combined artificial intelligence with self-consistent field theory to construct block-copolymer phase diagrams automatically. Self-consistent field theory is described in the paper as a standard framework for describing chain architecture and calculating self-assembly behaviour, used to predict how block copolymers form periodic ordered nanostructures.

That study illustrates two durable features of the laboratory. First, theory and computation are not auxiliary services but research directions in their own right, represented also by Fudan's Key Laboratory of Computational Physical Sciences in the author affiliations. Second, the laboratory applies new computational tools, including AI, to classical polymer problems such as phase behaviour, aiming to reduce reliance on individual experience and make predictions more robust and reproducible.

Polymer condensed physics and industrial materials

A chapter in the Fudan volume on applications of polymer condensed physics describes work led by Professor Yuliang Yang, whose team used fundamental theory and simulations of polymer condensed physics to guide industrial material innovation. The work included polymer materials developed for industrialisation in cooperation with a team led by Professor Jinliang Qiao of the Beijing Research Institute of Chemical Engineering of Sinopec, supported by China's national 973 and 863 programmes. The example is important because it connects abstract theory about how polymer chains organise in condensed states to materials produced at industrial scale.

Condensed-state questions run through polymer processing. How a melt flows, how chains orient during drawing or spinning, how crystallisation proceeds during cooling, and how phase structures freeze into a product determine whether a laboratory polymer can become a useful fibre, film or moulded article. A laboratory that studies those processes theoretically and experimentally can advise on processing windows rather than only supplying a new chemical structure and leaving manufacture to trial and error.

Carbon fibre materials and polymer processing are both named in the laboratory's founding research description in the clean candidate record, alongside polymer chemistry and physics and energy-related polymers. Carbon fibre production depends on polymer precursor chemistry and on processing that converts a polymer fibre through stabilisation and carbonisation, so it naturally draws together the laboratory's chemical, physical and engineering strands. No production claim is made here for any specific fibre product; the point is the research fit.

Energy, photoelectric and fibre devices

Energy-related polymers form one of the laboratory's six disciplinary areas, rendered in the Springer introduction as photoelectric and energy polymers. The Fudan volume highlights fibre polymer batteries and energy transduction among its cutting-edge topics. Fibre-shaped energy devices are a distinctive Fudan interest: a battery or energy device built in fibre form can in principle be woven or integrated into flexible structures, which requires polymers that remain functional under bending and processing, as well as electrochemical performance.

Energy polymers also include materials for storage and conversion in more conventional formats, where polymer electrolytes, binders, membranes and semiconducting polymers determine efficiency, safety and lifetime. Molecular engineering is directly relevant because small changes in chain structure, ionic groups or morphology can change ion transport, electronic transport and mechanical stability at the same time, forcing trade-offs that must be designed rather than discovered by accident.

Readers should distinguish research topics from commercial products. The sources used here establish fibre polymer batteries and energy transduction as documented research topics of the department and laboratory community, presented in a peer-reviewed publisher's volume. They do not establish that any particular device is manufactured or sold by the laboratory, which is a university research platform rather than a company.

Intelligent, biological and interface polymers

Intelligent polymers and biological polymers are two further named areas of the Fudan discipline. Intelligent, or responsive, polymers change properties in response to stimuli such as temperature, light, pH or electric fields, while biological polymers work at the interface with proteins, sugars, cells and tissues. The Fudan volume's highlights include precise protein self-assembly and glycochemical biology, both of which require controlling polymer and biomolecular assembly with high precision rather than treating biological matter as a passive additive.

Charged polymer interfaces provide a well-documented individual example. Associate Professor Xiayun Huang, a principal investigator in the laboratory, studies polyelectrolyte assemblies and charged polymer interfaces, including polymer topology, molecular and ionic transport, and interfacial water regulation. Her group develops functional polymer materials for solar-driven water treatment, molecular separation and sensing, and has published more than fifty peer-reviewed papers in journals including the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Advanced Functional Materials, Macromolecules and ACS Macro Letters, according to her seminar biography.

In a documented seminar, Huang described engineering water at charged polymer interfaces by regulating interfacial water states and hydrogen-bonding networks to facilitate evaporation, manipulating competitive hydration and ion-polymer interactions for selective transport in saline environments, and building hierarchical interfaces for directional water transport and sustained evaporation, with applications to solar-driven recovery of water and salt crystallisation from concentrated brines. That single programme shows how molecular design, assembly, transport measurement and device engineering combine inside the laboratory.

People, training and scholarly output

The laboratory's people are primarily the faculty of the Department of Macromolecular Science, whose members authored the Springer volume summarising a decade of work. Named researchers in the sources for this profile include Yuliang Yang in polymer condensed physics, Wei-Hua Li and Qing-Shu Dong in computational block-copolymer research, Xiayun Huang in charged interfaces, and Deng Yonghui, whose team in the Department of Chemistry and the State Key Laboratory of Polymer Molecular Engineering reported in Nature Materials the synthesis of orthogonally assembled three-dimensional cross-stacked metal oxide semiconductor nanowires by co-assembly of block copolymers and inorganic polyoxometalates.

The Deng result, reported by Fudan, is a useful marker of the laboratory's reach beyond purely organic materials. By using amphiphilic block copolymers such as PEO-b-PS together with tungstosilicic acid, the team induced micellisation, micellar fusion and solvent-evaporation-driven assembly into a porous nanowire array whose silicon-doped tungsten oxide form showed acetone sensing performance. Acetone is noted in the report as a biomarker volatile related to human physiology and pathology, linking polymer-guided assembly to sensing applications.

Training is inseparable from that output. A department founded in 1993 on a discipline dating to 1958, hosting a state key laboratory since 2011, trains undergraduate and graduate polymer scientists who staff universities, institutes and materials companies. The Springer introduction's statement that the discipline has cultivated large numbers of innovative talents is general, but it correctly identifies education as one of the laboratory's national functions alongside publication.

How to understand the laboratory's contribution

The laboratory's contribution is best understood through its organising idea. Many institutions synthesise polymers; fewer combine synthesis with condensed-matter theory, computational phase prediction, processing science and device-oriented energy and biological research under a single molecular-engineering banner. The Fudan volume explicitly presents that combination as a research paradigm and uses Fudan's progress as an example of the rapid development of polymer science in China.

That paradigm also explains the laboratory's publication pattern, which ranges from self-consistent field calculations and AI-assisted phase diagrams to fibre batteries, protein assembly and nanowire sensors. Such breadth can look scattered until the common question is recognised: how does molecular and assembled structure, deliberately designed, produce a macroscopic property or function? Each project answers that question for a different material system.

For directory readers, the essential facts are compact. The State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers is Fudan University's national polymer platform in Shanghai, founded in 2011, rooted in a 1958 discipline and a 1993 department, working across polymer chemistry, physics, engineering, intelligent and biological polymers, and energy and photoelectric polymers. Its record is documented in publisher, university and journal sources, and its work should be cited as university research, not as the product line of a materials manufacturer.