Recently, academician Huang Wei, Professor Zhao Qiang and their research team have achieved a breakthrough on multicolor and water-jet printing on rewritable paper with dynamic metal-ligand coordination. Their article entitled “Dynamic metal-ligand coordination for multicolor and water-jet rewritable paper” was published on 9th, January, 2018 in Nature Communications, a top international journal, afterwards selected to the column of“Research Highlights” by Nature with a feature article,“Printer paper comes clean — over and over again”. Meanwhile, a series of reports from such authoritative media as Natureasia, Chemical & Engineering News, and PHYS & ORG have also brought more attention to this achievement.
By means of dynamic metal-ligand coordination, the research team developed a type of rewritable paper for multicolor printing that can be preserved for a long time. It uses aqueous solutions containing different metal salts as ink, which brings changes in color when the metal ions are coordinated to ligands on paper. Since various metal salts are available, a great abundance of colors can be printed. Moreover, as pure water can stimulate luminescence switches through dissociation/coordination of the coordination bonds, environment-friendly inkless water-jet printing can be achieved. This article is another achievement of Academician Huang Wei, Professor Zhao Qiang and their research team concerning stimuli-responsive photofunctional materials published in Nature Communications, whose first authors are Associate Professor Ma Yun and the doctoral candidate, She Pengfei, both of whom are from NUPT.
