On October 27, the Next-Generation Materials for Energy Chemistry: Faraday Discussion 176 (FD176) opened grandly in Science & Art Center of Xiamen University. FD 176 is the first Faraday Discussion held in Asia over a hundred years. Two –hundred-ninety-seven delegates from 14 countries attended the meeting during the period of October 27-29.

FD176 was co-organized by the Royal Society of Chemistry and iChEM. Professor Zhong-Qun Tian from Xiamen University, director of iChEM, served as chairman of the meeting. President Chongshi Zhu of Xiamen University delivered a wonderful speech for the Opening Ceremony. He was proud that Xiamen University was the first university to hold Faraday Discussion in Asia. At the same time, he expressed sincere welcome to the speakers and delegates, and heartfelt thanks to the staff involved in the preparations for this meeting on behalf of Xiamen University.

Xiamen University strongly supported the FD176 for its organization of hospitality events, food and accommodation and is looking forward to the future discussions.

Faraday Discussion 176 centered on discussing how individual functional components at different length scale can be effectively integrated into next-generation energy materials, and through combination to optimize the function of each component, even creating new synergetic effects.

The first Faraday Discussion meeting was held over a hundred years ago in 1907 in London and debated "osmotic pressure", with the 250th meeting taking place in 2013. FD176 is the first Faraday Discussion in China. Faraday Discussions pride themselves on providing an opportunity for all delegates to contribute, with the discussions comments as well as the presented papers recorded in a fully citable way following the meeting. Many Faraday Discussions have become landmarks in the development of physical chemistry.

This meeting aims to bring together a global network of today's best experimentalists and theoreticians, chemists, physicists and materials scientists, providing the environment in which the cross-boundary exchange and discussion of energy-related information can take place. This discussion will provide a forum in which the next-generation of researchers will learn the importance of combining expertise from all these areas.

Faraday Discussions have a special format in which papers are distributed to all participants in advance of the conference and almost all the meeting is devoted to discussion of the papers. In this way, any participant at the conference has the opportunity to make a major contribution. All the papers and the submitted Discussion remarks - which include anything a contributor “said, or think they said or wished they had said” – will be published in the famous Faraday Discussion volume as a permanent and citable record of the meeting after the conference.