Professor Kwang-Un Jeong’s team (Dept. of Polymer-Nano Science & Technology) has attracted the attention of the world academy by developing a molecular tweezer that can collect fullerene (C60), a very small carbon nanomaterial, in a two-dimensional grid.

Recently the research results were published in ACS NANO, one of the top academic journals in materials science.

By using this technology, both the orientation of the carbon nanomaterials and the high dimensional structure between the two molecules can be controlled at the molecular unit to maximize the properties of the material.

Therefore, various materials such as electronic sensors, flexible electrodes, logic circuits, which have been drawing attention in Industry 4.0, can be easily manufactured with higher performance and are expected to be applied to a wide range of uses.

"By adopting a host-guest system to apply the excellent optical and physical properties of fullerene, we were able to control hybrid high-dimensional nanostructures with uniform orientation," said Dr. Minwook Park, the main author of the research.

"The new technique will contribute to molecular design and synthesis by presenting precise methods for high-dimensional hybrid structure control," said Professor Jeong.

The research was made possible with the participation of Minwook Park (Dept. of Polymer-Nano Science & Technology and Dept. of BIN Convergence Technology, Chonbuk National University), Kyeong-Im Hong (Dept. of Chemistry, Yonsei University), Minji Kang (Functional Composite Materials Research Center, Korea Institute of Science & Technology), Prof. Tae-Wook Kim (Functional Composite Materials Research Center, KIST), Hosoowi Lee (Dept. of Chemistry, YU), Prof. Woo-Dong Jang (Dept. of Chemistry, YU) and Prof. Kwang-Un Jeong (Dept. of Polymer-Nano Science & Technology and Dept. of BIN Convergence Technology, CBNU), with the support of the Korean Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and ICT.