News and Events

June, 2018

All three project students, Miss Justine Blake, Miss Rachael Molloy and Miss Savannah Turner, finished their research projects with very good results (all are publishable). Justine made a contribution to the establishment of formation mechanism of spherulites. Rachael demonstrated a very simple way to break down uric acid crystals. Savannah found a new crystal growth mechanism of zeolite X. Savannah obtained Charles Horrex Prize for the best honours research project in physical chemistry. Congratulations to all of them!

May, 2018

The group welcomes Dr. Zhong Liu from Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes, CAS to have second visit for three months. One of his papers published based on his first visit in 2014, [“The role of surface hydrolysis of ferricyanide anions in crystal growth of snowflake-shaped α-Fe2O3-”. Z. Liu, C.-Y. Chiang, W. Li, W. Z. Zhou, Chem. Comm.  51, 9350, 2015] won The First Prize of The Outstanding Papers in Natural Sciences, 2015-2016 Qinghai Province, China. Congratulations!

July, 2017

Miss Jialu Chen was awarded Nature Reviews Materials poster prize at 13th International Conference on Materials Chemistry (MC13) held in Liverpool. The poster title was: Formation Mechanisms of α-Fe2O3 Nanotubes and Nanorings in the Presence of Phosphate. Congratulations to Jialu!

June, 2017

Chang-yang Chiang obtained his PhD degree and will start his career in Taiwan. Final year project student, Miss Shona Macfarlane, graduated with first class BSc (Hons) degree. She will start her career in KPMG in London. Another final year project student, Miss Ting Yu Kong got BSc (Hons) degree and will start her career in Changsha, China. Congratulations to all of them!

March, 2017

Former Ph D student, Dr. Ziexue Su, did excellent experiments in California to detect ultrafast electron transfer from Fe3+-Fe3+ to Fe2+-Fe4+ in Fe2O3. The paper ‘Ultrafast Elemental and Oxidation-state Mapping of Haematite by 4D Electron Microscopy’, by Zixue Su, J. Spencer Baskin, Wuzong Zhou, John M. Thomas, and Ahmed H. Zewail, is published in J. Am. Chem. Soc., 139, 4916–4922 (2017).

February, 2017

Congratulations to Chang-Yang Chiang for his successful viva on the 17th of February!

January, 2017

Undergraduate student Alice Green’s paper based on her final year project report (2016) has been published:  Growth Mechanism of Dendritic Hematite via Hydrolysis of Ferricyanide, A. E. Green, C.-Y. Chiang, H. F. Greer, A. Waller, A. Ruszin, J. Webster, Z. Y. Niu, K. Self, W. Z. Zhou, Crystal Growth & Design, 17, 800–808 (2017). Some third year miniproject students (2015) also made contribution to this work and their names (Ashleigh Waller, Aron Ruszin, James Webster, Ziyin Niu) appear as co-authors. Wuzong congratulates all these undergraduates for their achievements.

January, 2017

The group welcomes two visitors Dr. Lanlan Luo and Kai Yu, from Nankai University. Both of them will stay here for one year.

December, 2016

During the Song and Yuan Dynasties (AD 960-1368) Chinese people played a stick-and-ball game called chui wan (捶 丸) that, from contemporary paintings, looks uncommonly like modern golf. But was it really an early form of golf? Five scholars associated with the University of St Andrews, Anthony Butler, David Hamilton, John Moffett, Wuzong Zhou and Chuan Gao, have written the first full analysis of the game, including a new translation of the rule book of chui wan, the Wan Jing (丸 经). Their conclusions throw new light on the origins of modern golf.

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September 2016

The group welcomes several new members this month, including Shitao Wu a new PhD student and three final year undergraduate students, Shona Macfarlane, Katie Beadle and Tingyu Kong.

June 2016

On 23 June, 2016, a farewell BBQ party was held in Wuzong’s house. We said ‘Cheerio’ to four group members. Alice Green graduated with a number of prizes, including Charles Horrex Prize for the best honours research project in physical chemistry, Forrester Prize for the best graduating student in 5th year and Irvine Jubilee Prize and Medal. She will start a PhD later this year at Oxford University. Beth Connolly graduated as a first class student with the Gray Prize for the best essay on a prescribed topic in chemistry. She will continue research in nanomaterials at Cambridge University as a PhD student. Both Alice and Beth will publish the results of their final year projects. Katie Self obtained her PhD degree and will start her career in Morgan Stanley, London. During her time in St Andrews she published 4 original research articles. During 8 years in Zhou group as an honours project student, PhD student and postdoctoral research fellow, Heather Greer published almost 30 papers. She is leaving for Cambridge University to run the electron microscopy facility in Department of Chemistry, where Wuzong did his PhD 30 years ago with David Jefferson.

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April 2016

Congratulations to our 5th year MChem student Alice Green, who was awarded one of this years prestigious Salters’ Graduate Prizes. She will be presented with the award at a ceremony in London in December.

December 2015

To celebrate our good achievements in 2015 the Zhou group had their Christmas lunch in Forgan’s on 16th December. A special welcome was given to Alice and Beth who just finished their final exam that morning. Their SEM images have been used in the Group Christmas Card as shown below.
Zhou Xmas card 2015

November 2015

Michael Telfer, (UG project student, 2013-14) had his results included in a publication ‘Reversed Crystal Growth of Zeolite Imidazolate Framework RHO-ZIF’ by Katherine Self, Michael Telfer, Heather F. Greer, Wuzong Zhou, Chem. Eur. J., 2015, 21, 19090.

September 2015

The group welcomes several new members this month, including Jialu Chen a new PhD student and two 5th year undergraduate students, Beth Connolly and Alice Green.

July 2015

Katie Self attended the Advances in Functional Materials meeting held at Stony Brook University, New York, to give a talk titled “Non-Classical Crystal Growth of ZnO Microstadiums”.

June 2015

Wuzong Zhou held a BBQ at his house to say goodbye to two of our group members, Fengjiao Yu and Xinhong Zhao.

bbq photo

June 2015

Heather Greer and Chang-Yang Chiang attended The 46th British Association for Crystal Growth Annual Conference held on 21-23 June 2015 at Queen Mary University, London. Heather gave a talk entitled ‘An electron microscopy study on the non-classical crystal growth of MOF-5’ whilst Chang-Yang gave an oral presentation on ‘The role of surface hydrolysis of ferricyanide anions in crystal growth of snowflake-shaped α-Fe2O3’. In addition, Heather and Chang-Yang were shortlisted for the “Crystals as Art” Competition. Heather won second prize for her coloured SEM image of a rose-like BiOBr particle.

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May 2015

Zhong Liu, a visiting scholar from Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining, China joined the group for 12 months. He published two papers during his visit, Facile Synthesis of (110)-Plane Exposed Au Microflowers as High Sensitive Hydrogen Peroxide Sensors in Eur. J. Inorg. Chem. (2015, 2528) and The Role of Surface Hydrolysis of Ferricyanide Anions in Crystal Growth of Snowflake-shaped α-Fe2O3 in Chem. Commun. (2015, 51, 9350).

March 2015

Fengjiao Yu and Heather Greer presented a poster on their research at SET for Britain held in the Houses of Parliament on 9th March 2015. The competition to present a poster attracts around 500 entrants, of whom approximately 35% are selected to present their work in Parliament.

SET photos

January 2015

Sir John Meurig Thomas’ book ‘Michael Faraday and The Royal Institution’ has been translated into Chinese by Wuzong Zhou and Chuan Gao, and has been published by Shanghai Sci. & Tech Press.

Michael FaradayDecember 2014

Katie Self, Kirsty McRoberts and Heather Greer presented posters on their research at the RSC Solid State Chemistry Group Christmas Meeting hosted by the University of Glasgow and University of Strathclyde. Katie won best poster prize award for her poster presentation titled Reversed Crystal Growth of Rhombohedral Calcite.

April 2014

Heather Greer gave an oral presentation on Non-classical Crystal Growth of Woven MOF-5 at the 37th Annual Meeting of the British Zeolite Association held at the University of Glasgow.

November 2013

Chunman Zheng, a visiting scholar from National University of Defense Technology, Changsha joined the group for 12 months. His results on the Microstructural Study of the Formation Mechanism of Metal-Organic Framework MOF-5 have been published in CrystEngComm, 2014, 16, 1064. It is the first paper on reversed crystal growth of MOFs.

October 2013

Heather Greer was awarded runner-up for the Materials Literature Review Prize 2013, resulting in a single-author paper Non-classical Crystal growth of Organic and Inorganic Materials published in Mater. Sci. Technol. (2014, 30, 611).

October 2013

A group of six third year undergraduate students, Angus Ritchie, Michael Watson, Robin Turnbull, Zheng Lu, Michael Telfer and Jerome Gano carried out a four week miniproject under the supervision of Professor Zhou which resulted in a publication titled Reversed Crystal Growth of Rhombohedral Calcite in the Presence of Chitosan and Gum Arabic, in CrystEngComm, 2013, 15, 10266.

August 2013

Katie Self was awarded first prize for her talk at the Northern Postgraduate Chemical Engineering Conference (NPCEC) held at Newcastle University. Her presentation was titled Reversed Crystal Growth of ZnO Microdisks.

IMG_20150630_104520July 2013

Fengjiao Yu gave an oral presentation on Surface Ligand Mediated Growth of CuPt Rods at the 11th International Conference on Materials Chemistry (MC11) held at the University of Warwick.

May 2013

Heather Greer and Katie Self worked in the lab of Professor Heyong He at Fudan University for durations of 3 and 12 months, respectively. Funding was provided by Sino-UK Higher Education Research Partnership for PhD studies. This funding also allowed PhD students, Min Tang, Li Ya and Xiang Liu from Fudan University to visit our St Andrews lab for 3 months.

January 2013

Wuzong Zhou published book ‘Ordered Mesoporous Materials’ with Dongyuan Zhao and Yin Wan, Wiley-VCH, 2013. The Chinese edition of the book is published by Higher Education Press, Beijing, 2013, and won 1st Prize in 4th Chinese University Press Biennial Competition, 2015.

Ordered Mesoporous Materials

April 2012

Katie Self carried out her undergraduate final year MChem project in the group. Her research on Reversed Crystal Growth of ZnO Microdisks has since been published in Chem. Commun. 2013, 49, 5411.

January 2011 & 2012

Heather Greer visited the lab of Professor Chung-Yuan Mou at National Taiwan University as part of an international collaboration funded by The Royal Society. This funding also allowed Professor Mou and Ming-Han Liu, a PhD student, to visit St Andrews. Two publications have resulted from this collaboration, The Origin of ZnO Twin Crystals in Bio-inspired Synthesis (CrystEngComm, 2012, 14, 1247) and Dipole Field Guided Orientated Attachment of Nanocrystals to Twin-Brush ZnO Mesocrystals (Chem. Eur. J., 2012, 18, 16104).    

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December 2011

Zixue Su was announced as the winner of the 2010 SCI Scotland Prize for the best PhD thesis submitted to a Scottish university in the fields of chemistry and related disciplines.

Zixue SuJuly 2011

Heather Greer gave an oral presentation on Reversed Crystal Growth Route and the Formation of Hollow Crystals at the 10th International Conference on Materials Chemistry (MC10) held at the University of Manchester.

March 2010

Heather Greer gave an oral presentation on Crystalline Mesoporous Silicates?‒A TEM study at the 33th Annual Meeting of the British Zeolite Association held at the University of Southampton.

November 2009

Heather Greer carried out her undergraduate final year honours project in the group. Her research on the Early Stage Reversed Crystal Growth of Zeolite A and Its Phase Transformation to Sodalite has been published in JACS, 2009, 131, 17986.