Shurui Miao

Headshot of Shurui Miao, a man with dark hair and glasses, smiling and wearing a navy sweater and white collared shirt. The background is yellow autumn leaves in a park.

Shurui Miao

Career Development Research Fellow

 

Research Interests

My research interests are centred around sustainability and self-assembly processes in solution. Specifically, I am interested in understanding the structure, interactions, and dynamics of atoms and small molecules in solution. By combining a range of physical chemistry techniques such as scattering, spectroscopy, electron and force microscopy, I aim to bridge the gap in length and time scale between the atomic world and macroscopic properties and behaviours. Current research projects can be briefly described as:

Rapid carbon mineralisation

Climate change is one of the most pressing global challenges of our time, with far-reaching impacts on the environment, economy, and human society. Scientific reports have shown reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone is not enough to prevent climate disasters. Carbon mineralisation is a natural process that can be accelerated for reliable and scalable carbon capture and storage. During this process, common rocks such as basalt react with carbon dioxide and water to form carbonate minerals. While pilot plants are being constructed around the world, the atomic mechanism of this process remain elusive due to the complexity of natural processes and the inherent challenge associated to studying solid-liquid interfaces. The role of key factors such as degrees of confinement, temperature, pressure, salt concentration, and chemical speciation, all remains unclear. This project involves using surface force balance, atomic force microscopy, and liquid phase electron microscopy to gain insights to the nucleation and growth of carbonate minerals on the atomic scale. This understanding will also deepen our understanding of how to controllably prepare crystalline functional materials.

Structure-property relationships of ionic liquids

Ionic liquids (ILs) and their mixtures have emerged as a promising class of material that exhibit desirable and tuneable solvent properties such as low volatility, high electrical and thermal stability, and wide solubility ranges. It has the potential to support next-generation sustainable solution processes such as biomass processing for biofuel production, liquid-liquid extraction for recycling, and applications in the energy and chemical synthesis sectors. Over the past decade, the structure of ILs have been extensively studied to explain some of their surprising physical properties. However, many of their long-promised applications are limited by the common high viscosity of these liquids. The mass and charge transport mechanism within, as well as the viscoelastic properties of these liquids remains poorly understood. This project combines a number of neutron and x-ray scattering and spectroscopy techniques to understanding the diffusive and sub-diffusive motion of ions and molecules within these complex fluids. This knowledge is crucial for the rational design and optimisation of ILs and their mixtures for specific applications.

Structure of water and phase behaviours

Liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS) of biopolymers has recently been shown to play a central role in the formation of membraneless organelles with a multitude of biological functions. They are also likely to play a key role during the very early stages of life where relevant small molecules must be enriched locally to sustain a self-duplicating chemical reaction. However, our understanding of this phenomenon such as the driving force for its formation, its functionalities, and how these depends on physiological and external conditions are all limited. The organisation of water molecules around biomolecules, ions, and near various interfaces likely plays a key role. This project aims at using light scattering, calorimetry, and spectroscopy to understand the thermodynamic driving force of LLPS and the accompanied changes in water structures.

Biography

Dr Shurui Miao is currently a Career Development Research Fellow in Chemistry at St John’s College, University of Oxford. He completed his PhD at the University of Sydney, Australia, under the supervision of Prof. Gregory Warr. In December 2022, Shurui joined the Group of Prof. Susan Perkin at Oxford as a Postdoctoral Research Associate before being awarded his Fellowship in 2024.

Publications

Contact

shurui.miao@chem.ox.ac.uk
012345 678901