The Sino-German Workshop “Exploration of Structure and Morphology in Polymers by Advanced Scattering Techniques” was held in Hangzhou from October 13-19, 2024. This workshop is funded by Sino-German Center for Research Promotion and jointly hosted by Prof. Qi Zhong from Zhejiang Sci-tech University in China and Prof. Peter Müller-Buschbaum from Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany. The main objective of this workshop is to establish a new and close collaboration between Chinese scientists in the field of polymers and German scientists working at Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY) and Research Neutron Source Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (FRM II). By the joint investigations about the polymer structure via the advanced scattering techniques, more details about the structure and morphology of functional polymers can be obtained, which is crucial for establishing the correlation between structure and function in polymers as well as improve the functions by the structural design.  

By invitation, 7 German scientists from TUM, DESY, and FRM II, as well as 12 Chinese scientists from Zhejiang Sci-tech University, Zhejiang University, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry Academia of Sciences, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University and so on attended the workshop.

During the workshop, the German and Chinese scientists gave 19 presentations mainly focused on three topics as “the mechanism and capabilities of scattering techniques”, “the functions and applications of polymer materials” and “the possible collaborations between German-Chinese scientists in future”. The graduate students from Chinese scientist group are also invited to broaden their academic view.

After this Sino-German workshop, the German and Chinese scientists decided to strengthen the collaboration in the field of investigation about the structure of bio-polymers, conducting polymers and hydrogels via advanced scattering techniques.