About the Seminars on Materials & Research Technology

The sMaR&T Seminar Series is designed to connect researchers at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) and across Luxembourg with leading international experts.

Drawing on experience from previous edition, the seminars goes beyond traditional lectures. It creates a dynamic setting that encourages informal, yet impactful, discussions between visiting speakers and the local research community. These interactions often lead to cross-disciplinary inspiration and, in many cases, the seed of new collaborative projects.

⇒ Dive into last edition’s program

Short Biography

Yiguang Ju is Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Associated Faculty of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and is the Director of DOE Energy Earthshot Research Center (EERC) for plasma assisted hydrogen production. Ju’s research interests include combustion, green fuels, plasma, and electrified manufacturing. Ju is a Fellow of The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and The Combustion Institute. He has received many awards such as the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the AIAA propellant and combustion award, the Alfred C. Egerton Gold Medal from the Combustion Institute, and the 2025 and 2026 R&D 100 Awards. He is Co-founder of HiTNano Inc, Princeton NuEnergy Inc, Polymer-X Inc, and USPlasma Inc. to develop innovative technologies for electrified and plasma aided manufacturing for energy decarbonization.

Topic

With the rapid increase of renewable electricity and electrical transportation, in the next decades fossil fuel energy will be transitioned into “electron energy” for a net zero carbon emission energy world. Non-equilibrium plasma provides a promising solution to the challenges of large intermittency of renewable electricity and the lack of gigawatt scale of electricity storage systems by enabling non-equilibrium reaction pathways via precisely controlled excited states and active species for efficient and green chemical conversion and manufacturing. In this seminar, control of plasma generation, instability, and chemistry for non-equilibrium ammonia synthesis and material manufacturing will be presented. The plasma generation and afterglow using ferroelectric electrode will be discussed. A theory of plasma thermal chemical instability in a reactive mixture will be presented. In situ diagnostics of non-equilibrium energy transfer in plasma discharge will be demonstrated. Finally, examples of plasma assisted catalytic synthesis of ammonia, material manufacturing/recycling, and combustion control will be highlighted (Fig. 1).

A new plasma assisted catalysis mechanism will be proposed.

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