AWARDEE OF TECHNOLOGICAL SCIENCES PRIZE

LIANG JINGKUI

Abstract

Prof. Liang Jingkui (J.K.Liang), a scientist of materials chemistry, was born in Apr. 1931 in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. He graduated from the chemistry department of Xiamen (Amoy) University in 1955, and received a candidate-doctor degree of Science and Technology, USSR Academy of Sciences in 1960. In 1993, he was elected as a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He had been the director of Fujian Institute of Research on Structure of Matter, CAS, and now is a research scientist, doctoral tutor, deputy chairman of scientific council, Institute of Physics and Center for Condensed Matter Physics of CAS, and member of standing Council of Chemistry Division of CAS.
He has been at the forefront of research on the basic aspects of interdisciplinary subjects among three fields: crystal structural chemistry, materials science and solid state physics. He has conducted extensive and in-depth studies on the synthesis, phase relations, phase transitions and crystal structures of inorganic functional materials including high Tc superconducting materials, non-linear optical materials, rare-earth magnetic materials and hydrogen storage materials and so on by using x-ray powder diffraction, thermal analysis and other methods.
He proposed and directed the design and production of “ An Instrument for Temperature Measurement of Instantaneous Process in Nuclear Test", which was proved to work very successfully. He pointed out that what produces a second harmonic generation (SHG) effect is the low-temperature phase of barium metaborate (BBO) through his phase relation study of barium borate-containing systems, and corrected the erroneous idea that “barium-sodium borate" in the substance responsible for the SHG before then. His work in principle solved the problem growing the BBO single crystal, and BBO single crystals were successfully grown for the first time. Based on the structural characteristics of high Tc superconducting oxides he put forward a simple and easy approach for identifying the structure type and estimating atomic positions of the high Tc oxide superconductors according to the planar spacing of the first diffraction line. From the viewpoint of crystal structure, he found and reported the existence of a series of Tl-based superconductors with different lattice parameter c values, and determined the structures of eight Tl-based superconductors belonging to two different structural types.
Prof. Liang has received several Prizes for National Natural Science and for Science and Technology Progress of CAS, and published more than 280 scientific and review papers as well as two monographs, which have been highly cited. He has trained a great number of Master and Ph.D. graduate Students.