Thanks to my PIFI grant I have spent in 2018 two periods of one month each in China (a report has already been submitted on this period), and thanks to a two-month extension I could come back for one month in 2019. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has prevented a stay in China planned in spring 2020. I have spent most of the time in Hefei in the research group of Dr. Tang Xiaofeng at the Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (AIOFM), Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). During these stays I had also the occasion to establish contact with other research groups in the AIOFM and visit several other laboratories and universities throughout China. Altogether, I was very impressed and nicely surprised by the variety of experimental set-ups available in Hefei, East China’s Anhui Province, many of them highly complementary to my own research work. Several opportunities to collaborate in the future have opened up during these stays. Such future collaboration has been very much simplified by the fact that I have obtained a 10-year visa to China.

During my stays in Hefei I had close contact with several students. One of the students, Zhang Cuihong, decided to enroll as a PhD student under cotutelle agreement between the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and my research group. She applied for a CSC fellowship, and we managed to do all paperwork for obtaining the cotutelle agreement during the first lockdown period in 2020. Zhang could finally come to France in March 2021, when the pandemic situation had slightly improved in France.

She is mostly working in my laboratory on the chemistry of peroxy radicals, which are key species in atmospheric chemistry. She does experiments using a complex set-up of laser photolysis coupled to a detection of the peroxy radicals by cavity ring down spectroscopy. First results concerning her work have already been published in one paper.

In July 2021, Zhang and myself went to the French synchrotron SOLEIL south of Paris to carry out experiments for several days. We were doing experiments concerning the formation of clusters which can explain the formation of aerosols. It was planned that Dr. Tang also come to France to lead the measurement campaign, but again the pandemic prevented him from traveling. Therefore, we had regular Zoom conferences once or twice a day to discuss the results and plan future experiments to carry out. Another measurement campaign is planned in January 2022, and hopefully Dr. Tang can travel to France this time to participate in the measurements, together with Zhang and myself.

During my stay in China in September 2019, I did some collaborative work in Hefei and visited the laboratory of Dr. Li Chuanliang at Taiyuan University. I gave a seminar at the institute and we discussed his ongoing research. Our research interest is very close, and in the very near future Dr. Li will come to France for a visiting fellowship and stay for one year in my laboratory, helping me set up a multipass detection system.

For some touristic diversion, Dr. Li took me to the magnificent Yungang Caves. At the end of this stay, I participated in the International Symposium on Free Radicals, which was held in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province.

Altogether, I was extremely well received by all members of the institute and also during the different visits in other institutes. My visit was very well prepared by my host, and all members including the students were open-minded and always ready for a discussion, all of them speaking good English. The PIFI grant allowed me to make many connections with Chinese colleagues, and I’m sure these collaborations will go on in the future.

Source: Christa Fittschen

Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS),

Chinese Academy of Sciences