HKUST Annual Report 2024-2025

34 HKUST ANNUAL REPORT 2024-25 Research Excellence SCIENCE Photocatalysis Leap Forward Heralds Wider Industrial Potential Photocatalysis, a process that speeds up or initiates chemical reactions, holds great promise for industrial applications, though its adoption has been limited by cost and energy efficiency. Marking a major advance, Prof. LU Haipeng (Chemistry) and his team have discovered a method to activate previously “impossible molecules”. By adopting a two-photon spin-exchange Auger process using magnetic-doped quantum dots, their approach generates hot electrons which demonstrate remarkable potential for a variety of organic reactions. This breakthrough requires only 1% of the light energy used in earlier systems and enables transformations that were formerly unattainable. New Insights into Ocean Circulation Mechanisms Researchers led by Prof. GAN Jianping (Ocean Science) have unveiled novel insights into global ocean circulation dynamics. Using the current-undercurrent system in the Western Pacific Ocean as a model problem, they have uncovered, for the first time, the mechanisms of nonlinear instability and intensified turbulence within it. Such findings provide physics-based dynamics for identifying western undercurrents and modelling a complete 3D global ocean circulation pattern, which could lead to better predictions of energy and heat transport, and consequently, climate change.