The 44th International Symposium on Macromolecules - IUPAC World Polymer Congress was held at Virginia Polytechnic University during June 24-29. About 1500 attendees from more than 50 countries took part in the conference. Prof. Xi Zhang from the Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, was invited to give a one-hour plenary lecture entitled “Single-molecule Force Spectroscopy and Interaction of Macromolecules”.
Prof. Zhang and his students started this field in 1997, supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and The Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST). They built the instrument of single-molecule force spectroscopy based on atomic force microscopy, and investigated intermoleculear and intramolecular interaction at single-molecule level using this method. Having worked on this frontier and interdisciplinary field until today, they obtained many significant information which can not obtained by traditional methods, including the understanding of molecular structure, supramolecular structure and interfacial structure, such as the conformation transfer of polysaccharide at external force and its finger print character on the force spectroscopy, the adsorption structure and adsorbing force of polymer at the interface, the intercalate interaction between dsDNA and planar conjugated molecule as well as its derivative method of the detection of mismatch dsDNA, method for measuring the intermolecular force at condensed state and the unfolding of polymer chain in polymeric crystal, the manipulation of single responsive polymer chain and single molecule motor, and so on.
The International Symposium on Macromolecules, which was started in 1947 and organized by International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), are the most important international academic conference in macromolecule field. Prof. Xi Zhang is the second Chinese scientist who was invited to give plenary lecture on this conference. The first one is Prof. Ming Jiang from Fudan University. The chairman of conference, Prof. Timothy E. Long sent congratulatory letter to Prof. Xi Zhang after the conference” Thank you for coming a long distance to represent China as a plenary speaker. Your science inspires the world.’
