Professor LIU Xiang-Yang


Personal Web Page

B.Sc, 1982, Shandong University, M.Sc. 1985, Shandong University, Ph D with cum laude, 1992, Radboud University of Nijmegen

Contact Information

Department of Chemistry, NUS 
3 Science Drive 3 
Singapore 117543  		Office: S13-M01-04 
Tel: (65) 6516-2812
Fax: (65) 6777-6126 
E-mail: phyliuxy@nus.edu.sg


Research Interests

Biological Materials and  Physics

Biomacro-molecule crystallization, self-assembly and aggregation in the bulk and at the surface; Antifreeze mechanism and antifreeze protein; Biomineralization mechanism and tissue engineering; Silk formation mechanism and engineering.



Micro/Nano Materials and Soft Materials Formation and Engineering 

Supramolecular self-assembly and micro/nano architecture; Microemulsion crystallization and nanomaterials preparation; Micro/nano particle self assembly; mesoscopic structures and properties of liquid crystals; Self assembly of colloidal spheres (Mechanism of colloidal crystallization and self-assembly; Colloidal crystallization and self-assembly under the influence of field gradient; Fabrication of photonic crystals).



Crystallization/molecular Assembly and Hybrid materials

The surface roughening transition and the structure of crystal-liquid interfaces; the prediction of morphologies (shapes) of crystals, and the design of crystal habit modifiers and/or crystallization inhibitors by surface recognition; nucleation and crystals growth; spherulitic crystallization and crystal network (aggregation) formation.



Representative Publications

  • The rough-flat-rough transition at crystal surfaces. X.Y. Liu, P. Bennema and J.P. van der Eerden, Nature 356, 778 (1992).
  • Surface roughening of n-alkane crystals: solvent dependent critical behavior.  X.Y. Liu*, P. van Hoof and P. BENNEMA, Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 109 (1993).
  • Prediction of growth morphology of crystals based on interfacial structure analysis. X.Y. Liu, E.S Boek, W.J. Briels and P. Bennema,  Nature 374, 342-345 (1995).
  • Creating new supramolecular materials by architecture of three-dimensional nano crystal fiber networks, X.Y. Liu, P.D. Sawant, Wee Beng Tan, I. B. M. Noor, C. Pramesti, and B. H. Chen, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 124 , 15055-15063 ( 2002 ).
  • In situ observation of colloidal monolayer nucleation driven by an alternating electric field. K.-Q. Zhang and X. Y. Liu, Nature 429, 739-742 (2004).
  • Ice surface reconstruction as AFP-induced morphological modification mechanism. C. Strom, X.Y. Liu* and Z.C. Jia,  J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127, 428-440 (2005).
  • Engineering of a supramolecular functional material by architecture of the Micro/nano Structure of Fiber Network. Jing-Liang Li, X.Y. Liu*, Christina Strom, and J. Y. Xiong, Adv. Mat. 18, 2574-2578 (2006).
  • Two scenarios of the colloidal phase transitions,  Ke-Qin Zhang and X. Y. Liu*, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 105701-105704 (2006).
  • How does transient amorphous precursor template crystallization. Tian Hui Zhang, X. Y. Liu*, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 129, 13520-13526 (2007).
  • Nucleation: What happens at the initial stage?  Tian Hui Zhang and Xiang Yang Liu*, Angew. Chemie Int. Ed. 48, 1308-1312(2009).