Tung-Chun Lee

Tung Chun Lee is an Associate Professor in Nanomaterials Chemistry (h-index: 23, total citation: 3500+). He received his BSc in Chemistry from University of Hong Kong in 2005 and his PhD in Chemistry from University of Cambridge in 2012. He was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart from 2011 to 2014. In 2014 he joined University College London as a Lecturer and started his independent academic career. Currently, he is leading a research group of 8 PhDs and 7 MScs, working on cutting-edge research in nanomaterials and nanochemistry. He has secured in total £1.3m research grants from EPSRC, Leverhulme Trust, Royal Society and industry partners, and has served as an invited referee of 21 grant applications from EPSRC, MRC, Cancer Research UK and RGC HK.

His research interests include exotic nanoparticles, nanofabrication, nanochemistry, active matter and supramolecular chemistry, all of which show potential applications in sensing, drug delivery, photovoltaic and catalysis. To date, he has 49 publications in high-impact journals, featuring Nat. Chem., Nat. Mater., Nat. Commun., Nano Lett., ACS Nano and Angew. Chem. Other academic achievements include 2 patents (1 licenced by industry), 2 book chapters and 11 journal covers. He is a regular reviewer of journals such as Nat. Commun., Small, Nanoscale and ChemComm.

Research Interests

• Nanomaterials and nanoparticles
• Nanochemistry
• Active matter: micro- and nanomotors
• Supramolecular chemistry: self-assembly and encapsulation
• Metamaterials and plasmonic materials
• Physical vapour deposition (PVD): glancing angle deposition (GLAD)
• Transmission electron microscopy (TEM)

Selected publications

Suresh Moorthy, Alvaro Castillo Bonillo, Hugues Lambert, Elina Kalenius, and Tung-Chun Lee, “Modulating reaction pathway of phenyl diazonium ion using host-guest complexation with cucurbit[7]uril”, Chem. Commun., 2022, 58, 3617–3620.

Hugues Lambert, Alvaro Castillo Bonillo, Qiang Zhu, Yong-Wei Zhang, and Tung-Chun Lee, “Supramolecular gating of guest release from cucurbit[7]uril using de novo design”, npj Comput. Mater., 2022, 8, DOI: 10.1038/s41524-022-00702-0.

Weng-I Katherine Chio, Jia Liu, Tabitha Jones, Jayakumar Perumal, Dinish U. S., Ivan P. Parkin, Malini Olivo, and Tung-Chun Lee, “SERS multiplexing of methylxanthine drug isomers via host-guest size matching and machine learning”, J. Mater. Chem. C, 2021, 9, 12624–12632.

Jia Liu, Hugues Lambert, Yong-Wei Zhang, and Tung-Chun Lee, “Rapid estimation of binding constants for cucurbit[8]uril ternary complexes using electrochemistry”, Anal. Chem., 2021, 93, 4223–4230. (Cover article)

Hugues Lambert, Yong-Wei Zhang, and Tung-Chun Lee, “Supramolecular catalysis of m-xylene isomerization by cucurbiturils: Transition state stabilization, vibrational coupling and dynamic binding equilibrium”, J. Phys. Chem. C, 2020, 124, 11469−11479. (Cover article)

Weng-I Katherine Chio, Suresh Moorthy, Jayakumar Perumal, Dinish U. S, Ivan P. Parkin, Malini Olivo, and Tung-Chun Lee, “Dual-triggered nanoaggregates of cucurbit[7]uril and gold nanoparticles for multi-spectroscopic quantification of creatinine in urinalysis”, J. Mater. Chem. C, 2020, 8, 7051–7058.

Hugues Lambert, Neetha Mohan, and Tung-Chun Lee, “Ultrahigh binding affinity of a hydrocarbon guest inside cucurbit[7]uril enhanced by strong host-guest charge matching”, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2019, 21, 14521–14529. (Cover article)

Hyeon-Ho Jeong, Eunjin Choi, Elizabeth Ellis, and Tung-Chun Lee, “Recent advances in gold nanoparticles for biomedical applications: from hybrid structures to multi-functionality”, J. Mater. Chem. B, 2019, 7, 3480–3496.

Weng-I Katherine Chio, William J. Peveler, Khaleel I. Assaf, Suresh Moorthy, Werner M. Nau, Ivan P. Parkin, Malini Olivo, and Tung-Chun Lee, “Selective Detection of Nitro-Explosives Using Molecular Recognition within Self-Assembled Plasmonic Nanojunctions”, J. Phys. Chem. C, 2019, 123, 15769−15776. (Cover article)

William J. Peveler, Hui Jia, Tiffany Jeen, Kelly Rees, Thomas J. Macdonald, Zhicheng Xia, Weng-I Katherine Chio, Suresh Moorthy, Ivan P. Parkin, Claire J. Carmalt, W. Russ Algar, and Tung-Chun Lee, "Cucurbituril-mediated quantum dot aggregates formed by aqueous self-assembly for sensing applications", Chem. Commun., 2019, 55, 5495–5498.

Elizabeth Ellis, Suresh Moorthy, Weng-I Katherine Chio, and Tung-Chun Lee, “Artificial molecular and nanostructures for advanced nanomachinery”, Chem. Commun., 2018, 54, 4075–4090. (Feature article, front cover)

Elizabeth Ellis, Kangyi Zhang, Qianyu Lin, Enyi Ye, Alessandro Poma, Giuseppe Battaglia, Xian Jun Loh, and Tung-Chun Lee, “Biocompatible pH-responsive nanoparticles with a core-anchored multilayer shell of triblock copolymers for enhanced cancer therapy”, J. Mater. Chem. B, 2017, 5, 4421–4425. (Emerging Investigators 2017 Issue, times cited 45+)

Hyeon-Ho Jeong, Andrew G. Mark, Tung-Chun Lee, Mariana Alarcón-Correa, Sahand Eslami, Tian Qiu, John G. Gibbs, and Peer Fischer, “Active nanorheology with plasmonics”, Nano Lett., 2016, 16, 4887–4894. (Times cited 37+)

Hyeon-Ho Jeong, Andrew G. Mark, Mariana Alarcón-Correa, Insook Kim, Peter Oswald, Tung-Chun Lee, and Peer Fischer, “Dispersion and shape engineered plasmonic nanosensors”, Nat. Commun., 2016, 7:11331. (Times cited 91+)

Xian Jun Loh, Tung-Chun Lee, Qingqing Dou, and G. Roshan Deen, “Utilising inorganic nanocarriers for gene delivery”, Biomater. Sci., 2016, 4, 70–86. (InCitesTM top 1% highly cited paper, times cited 211+)

Mariana Alarcón-Correa, Tung-Chun Lee, and Peer Fischer, “Dynamic inclusion complexes of metal nanoparticles inside nanocups”, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2015, 54, 6730–6734. (Cover article)

Tian Qiu, Tung-Chun Lee, Andrew G. Mark, Konstantin I. Morozov, Raphael Münster, Otto Mierka, Stefan Turek, Alexander M. Leshansky, and Peer Fischer, “Swimming by reciprocal motion at low Reynolds number”, Nat. Commun., 2014, 5: 5119. (Altmetric score: 238+, times cited: 217+)

Tung-Chun Lee, Mariana Alarcón-Correa, Cornelia Miksch, Kersten Hahn, John G. Gibbs, and Peer Fischer, “Self-propelling nanomotors in the presence of strong Brownian forces”, Nano Lett., 2014, 14, 2407–2412. (InCitesTM top 1% highly cited paper, times cited: 189+)

Andrew G. Mark, John G. Gibbs, Tung-Chun Lee, and Peer Fischer, “Hybrid nanocolloids with programmed three-dimensional shape and material composition”, Nat. Mater., 2013, 12, 802–807. (InCitesTM top 1% highly cited paper, times cited: 303+)

Tung-Chun Lee, Elina Kalenius, Alexandra I. Lazar, Khaleel I. Assaf, Nikolai Kuhnert, Christian H. Grün, Janne Jänis, Oren A. Scherman, and Werner M. Nau, “Chemistry inside molecular containers in the gas phase”, Nat. Chem., 2013, 5, 376–382. (Cover article, times cited: 104+)

Richard W. Taylor, Tung-Chun Lee, Oren A. Scherman, Ruben Esteban, Javier Aizpurua, Fu Min Huang, Jeremy J. Baumberg, and Sumeet Mahajan, “Precise sub-nm plasmonic junctions for SERS within gold nanoparticle assemblies using cucurbit[n]uril ‘glue’”, ACS Nano, 2011, 5, 3878–3887. (Times cited: 265+)

Tung-Chun Lee, and Oren A. Scherman, “Formation of dynamic aggregates in water by cucurbit[5]uril capped with gold nanoparticles”, Chem. Commun., 2010, 46, 2438–2440. (Times cited: 109+)