Insertion of theses in international academic journals every year after continuous presentations of excellent theses by faculty students

Joint researches by undergraduate & graduate senior & junior students … positioning as the tradition of the department by passing down unique research power

[April 25, 2023]

<Research team of YU Department of Chemistry (From the left, researchers SON Nam-gyu, MOON Ho-jun, and KIM Soo-jeong)>

It’s a hot topic that there is a department of which undergraduate students publish theses every year in renowned international journals.

YU Department of Chemistry has continuously shown such world-level research performances.Students of the department have been inserting theses in major renown academic journals in chemistry and material science areas, etc. every year.The undergraduate & graduate students made fairly large joint research performances.By leading by senior students and by following by junior students, they pass down unique research power as the tradition of the department.

This time, the thesis is the research performance on zinc sulfide (ZnS) composites related with production of hydrogen that is attracting attention as a next-generation energy source.From YU Graduate School of Chemistry, MOON Ho-jun (Master's 1st term) and KIM Su-jeong (Master's 3rd term) participated as the first authors and Professor KANG Mi-suk and Researcher SON Nam-gyu (Ph.D completion) participated as corresponding authors.Especially, the first author MOON Ho-jun was in his fourth year of undergraduate studies at the time of writing this thesis and had inserted a thesis in another international academic journal last year, too.This thesis was inserted in the most recent version (April, 2023) of Nano Today that is an international academic journal in nano technology with 18.96 of Impact factor (IF) and at 5.36% of upper level.

The research team produced zinc sulfide (ZnS) composites showing various shapes and selective performances with use of many additives similar with ethylenediamine which is mostly used to control catalysis synthesis. It was found that an additive among the used additives enhanced productivity of hydrogen to be generated when decomposing water with solar light and another additive enhanced productivity of methane (CH₄) through conversion of carbon dioxide (CO₂).

Hydrogen energy attracts attention because small volume may generate a large power. Now, most of hydrogen is generated by reforming methane with hot steam but this method has a problem that 10kg of carbon dioxide is generated when 1kg of hydrogen is generated. The performance of this research attracts attention because it suggests a resolution of such problem.

The first author MOON Ho-jun said, “It was found in this research that, when hydrogen is generated with use of zinc sulfide synthesized with use of specific additives, hydrogen is only generated as the byproduct.Various materials were added in synthesis of zinc sulfide and unique properties of each composite were identified in this research,” and said his future research plan, “I’d like to conduct lithium ion batteries or fuel batteries that are environment-friendly energy materials over optical catalysis.”

Meanwhile, the research conducted by YU Department of Chemistry was conducted as a mid-level researcher support project of National Research Foundation of Korea.