Abstract
This talk will cover our recent research progresses on a unique class of nanomaterials, tungsten oxides (WOx）.Techniques for the synthesis of different types of WOx will be discussed in detail. This type of materials exhibits a wealthy chromogenic characteristics and has recently showed high potentials towards practical energy-related applications as the key components in smart or intelligent device constructions. As an important candidate for chromogenic devices, WOx offers fast insertion kinetics, high coloration efficiency (CE), good memory and high contrast ratio, compared with other transition metal oxides. The potential smart or intelligent window/glazing applications (such as electrochromic, thermochromic or gasochromic device) for energy saving, as protection coatings to manage the thermal property of solar cells for energy generation, and as efficient hydrogen sensor during energy generation and transportation, all point to interesting energy-related research areas and demand further efforts to achieve thorough understandings prior to materialization. To construct smart devices that are capable of working across a wide range of temperature, having a fast response and high coloration efficiency, various parameters such as low temperature pre-treatment, porous conductive polymer, complex gel electrolyte, as well as rare-earth doped WOx nanostructures will be discussed in this talk.

Bio
Royal Society Industry Fellow (RSIF), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), Fellow of The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM). 
Yanqiu Zhu was born in China. He received his BSc and MSc degrees in Materials Science from Harbin Institute of Technology (Harbin, China) in 1989 and 1992 respectively, then moved to Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) to study carbon nanotubes with Prof D H Wu, and obtained his PhD degree in Materials Science in 1996. After 8 months stay in National Institute for Materials Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan, as a COE Fellow working with Prof T Sekine, he joined the Sussex Fullerene Science Centre at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, in April 1997, working with Prof Sir H W Kroto and Dr D R W Walton. During that lengthy period Dr Zhu, as a Research Fellow, studied carbon nanotubes, inorganic nanomaterials and in particular the so-called Inorganic Fullerenes, WS2 nanoparticles and nanotubes. From December 2003, he started his EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship at the School of Materials, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Nottingham, where he became a Reader and Associate Professor in Nanomaterials from January 2008. At Nottingham, he established the Nanotubes Laboratory in the Wolfson Building, and carried out extensive research on a wide scope from nanomaterials to nanocomposites etc. He took the Chair of Functional Materials at Exeter in August 2010. Based on his Nanotubes Laboratory, Prof Zhu developed the Functional Materials Lab.
Prof Zhu is an author/co-author of about 160 peer reviewed scientific journal papers, with accumulated citations in excess of 6500 times and an h-index of 44 from SCI, and citations of 9000 times and an h-index of 48 from Google Scholar.
He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief for the newly launched Open Access journal, The Functional Nanomaterials Journal by Veruscript, which adopts a unique Referee Rewarding system.
His main area of expertise is experimental synthesis, characterization of advanced nanomaterials with interesting functionalities, covering fundamental nanomaterials science and applied nanocomposites development.