This Institute Feature “Dalian University of Technology” is a special collection of research articles and reviews on the inorganic chemistry in Dalian University of Technology. The Dean of the School of Chemical Engineering Xinwen Guo and the Guest Editor Jianzhang Zhao briefly introduce Dalian University of Technology and showcase the excellent research in this collection. Dalian University of Technology (DUT) was founded in 1949. It is a national key university directly administrated by the Ministry of Education of China and sponsored by Project 211 and Project 985. It has formed a multi-disciplinary system that focuses on science and engineering, as well as economics, management, humanities, law, philosophy, and arts. The university has 27 schools and more than 2992 faculty members, including 15 Chinese academicians. The university is actively involved in promoting the “One Belt, One Road” education initiative and building a community of shared future for human beings’ development. At present, the university has established three Sino-foreign cooperative institutions with Ritsumeikan University, Leicester University, and Belarusian State University, and one Sino-foreign cooperative program with University of California, Irvine. The university actively fosters over 150 overseas exchange programs. In recent years, nearly 3,000 students studied overseas each year; more than 700 overseas experts and scholars have been invited to DUT for long/short-term visits each year. Up to 2021, the university has enrolled 1,077 international students. DUT has joined 21 international organizations and alliances in higher education, including the Sino-EU Engineering Education Platform, Association of Sino-Russian Technical Universities, University Alliance of Belt & Road, Shanghai Cooperation Organization University, China-Central Eastern European Countries Higher Education Institutions Consortium, and ASEAN-China Network for Cooperation and Exchange among Engineering and Technology Universities. The School of Chemical Engineering of DUT was found in 1949. Nowadays there are nine departments in the school, including chemical engineering, material engineering, applied catalysis, chemical engineering processing, pharmaceutical engineering, and fine chemicals, etc. with 256 faculties in total. The school has strong collaborations with several world-renowned universities and institutes. In this Institute Feature, the review article by Li et al. focuses on the stereoselective polymerization catalysts for aromatic polar vinyl monomers, which gives a detailed analysis of the effect of the molecular structure of the catalysts and solvents on the activity and stereoselectivity of the polymerization reaction. In another review article, Wu et al. summarized the recent development in preparing nanospheres for the application of photonic materials in areas of coloring, sensors, luminescence, and surface-enhanced Raman scattering. Zhao et al. reported the preparation of efficient catalysts for the hydrodeoxygenation of methyl palmitate to produce biodiesel. Guo et al. reported new CuBTC materials with hierarchical pore structures for efficient separation of CO2/CH4, which has potential applications in industry. Zhu et al. reported the synthesis of sheet-like ZSN-5 zeolites with an ethanol modulator. The obtained sheet-like ZSM-5 showed better catalytic performance than its conventional counterpart in the alkylation of benzene with ethanol. Yu et al. reported the preparation of a series of supported metal sulfate catalysts FexZny/SiO2, which was efficient for isobutene dimerization but inert for other olefins in the C4 mixture (a valuable petroleum processing by-product). The catalysts were useful for the rational utilization of mixed C4 and further production of isooctane with a high-octane number to replace methyltert-butylether (MTBE) in gasoline. Gao et al. prepared an amorphous Ti/SiO2 catalyst by grafting amorphous SiO2 with TiCl4 in ethanol solvent in a chemical liquid-phase deposition process, which showed high catalytic activity for gas-phase epoxidation of propylene. Xiong et al. reported the preparation of Y/ZSM-5 composite zeolites by an aerosol-assisted hydrothermal method involving two-step crystallization. The application of catalytic 1,3,5-triisopropylbenzene cracking for the selective production of benzene was studied. Ge et al. reported a facile assembly-within-foam strategy to prepare a nanodiamond/carbon nanotube hybrid monolithic carbocatalyst for direct dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene to styrene. Suo et al. reported a method for preparing well-confined Ni nanoparticles (NPs) by precisely adjusting the reduction temperature of nickel-containing phyllosilicates (PSi) materials to obtain [email protected] catalysts. The materials were used as catalysts for the steam reforming of methane. It was found the material was not only endowed with the highest reaction rate for steam reforming of methane (SRM) but also kept high stability under harsh reaction conditions. Feng et al. reported calcium coordination polymers showing multi-stimuli-responsive properties, such as mechanochromic luminescence and selective detection of halogenated hydrocarbons or trace water in DMF. Meng et al. prepared an organic dye-conjugated Eu(III) complex as a luminescent probe for the discrimination and detection of biothiols (GSH and Cys/Hcy.), which allowed time-gated and steady-state luminescence modes to be combined for detecting total biothiols and discriminating GSH and Cys/Hcy. In another VIP paper, Kong et al. reported a unique Eu3+−Tb3+-complex-mixed probe for ratiometric time-gated luminescence detection of H2S. The probe showed prominent Golgi apparatus-targeting ability, selective detection of H2S in aqueous media and Golgi apparatus of living cells was successfully achieved. Ye et al. prepared a N^N Pt(II) bisacetylide complex using perylenemonoimide acetylide ligand. The complex was used as a triplet photosensitizer to generate delayed fluorescence with perylenebisimide (PBI) as the triplet state energy acceptor and emitter, via the intermolecular triplet-triplet energy transfer (TTET) and triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA), the delayed fluorescence lifetime is up to 52.5 μs under the experimental conditions. Zhao et al. reported the pyrolysis of NiFe-containing nanocrystals, which lead to the formation of NiFe alloy particles embedded in carbon with an exceptionally high area specific exchange current density toward the alkaline hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR). Yan et al. reported that the addition of formic acid as a modulator led to the formation of MOF-801 membrane with a higher missing-linker number, which was beneficial for increasing water flux with little compromise in dye rejection rate, thus holding great promise for application in wastewater treatment. Wang et al. prepared porous α-Al2O3-supported short-chain bis(triethoxysilyl)methane (BTESM)-based hybrid-silica membranes as potential candidates for application in desalination. Wu et al. used first-principle-based thermodynamic calculation to study CO adsorption in atomic catalysts. Wang et al. prepared a non-enzymatic glucose biosensor based on nanostructured CuxO/Cu electrodes. He et al. employed the strategy of generating catalytic species from in situ reduction of divalent cobalt(II) salt for selective carbonylative ring expansion of epoxides under extremely mild conditions. β-Lactones with excellent functionality were moderately isolated to achieve excellent yields and selectivity. Wu et al. prepared homochiral Ir(III)-metallohelix-based porous molecular crystal, and the polymorph by single-crystal-to-single-crystal (SCSC) transformations was studied. The authors found that the β-polymorph could be effectively obtained through SCSC transformation from α-polymorph in solid state using isopropanol as a trigger. Compared with the α-polymorph, the obtained β-polymorph porous molecular crystal displayed higher CO2 uptake and better selectivity for CO2 over N2 at 298 K. Both β-polymorph and α-polymorph exhibited similar enantioselective separation capacity towards alcohols but different adsorption kinetics. Feng et al. reported the gram-scale synthesis of a novel unsymmetric β-diketiminate ligand containing a thioether tether, which served as not only a bio-mimicking functional platform but also excellent cooperative catalysts. We are grateful to the editorial office of Eur. J. Inorg. Chem for offering this showcase. We are grateful to all the authors for their great enthusiasm for the support of this Institute Feature, especially Prof. Yi Liu for their great effort. We would like to thank all the reviewers for their critical comments. We believe that inorganic chemistry research at Dalian University of Technology will continue flourishing. Moreover, through collaboration with chemists all over the world, we can find better solutions for addressing global concerns. The opinions expressed in this publication are the view of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of the European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry, the Publisher, Chemistry Europe, or the affiliated editors. Xinwen Guo is a Professor at Dalian University of Technology. He received Ph.D. degree from Dalian University of Technology (DUT) in 1994. Then, he joined DUT as a lecturer. He was promoted to full professor in 2001. From 2001 to 2002, he was a visiting scholar at Penn State University. His research focuses on zeolite synthesis, MOF synthesis, shape-selective catalysis, selective oxidation, and the catalytic conversion of CO2. He has published more than 500 papers on peer-reviewed journals, with 13,000 citations and H-index of 62. He is the member of the International Advisory Board of the journal Chin J of Catal. and the Specialty Chief Editor of Frontiers in Chemical Engineering (Catalytic Engineering). Jianzhang Zhao is a Professor at Dalian University of Technology. He received a Ph.D. degree at Jilin University in 2000. After postdoctoral research at Pohang University of Science and Technology (South Korea), Max Planck Research Unit of Enzymology of Protein Folding (Germany), and University of Bath (U.K.), he took up the current position at Dalian University of Technology in 2005. His research interests are synthesis of functional organic and inorganic compounds, and study of the charge, energy, spin transport by transient optical spectroscopic methods and pulsed laser excited time-resolved electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy. He is also interested in the application of photochemistry in industry. He has published more than 300 papers in peer-reviewed journals, with 17,000 citations and an H-index of 78. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of Eur. J. Inorg. Chem.
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