Many research attentions have been focused on the utilization of agricultural lignocellulose biomass to produce value-added products due to its highly abundance, biocompatibility and biodegradability. One of our major research focuses is to extract nanocellulose from lignocellulosic biomass and further used it to produce functionalized materials. Conventional acid hydrolysis method was used to isolate cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) from holocellulose of oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) fibres and kenaf core wood. While two different homogenization systems, high speed blender and Silverson mixer, were used to defibrillate holocellulose to produce cellulose nanofibrils (CNF).Silver nanomaterials (nanoparticles, nanoprisms and nanowires) and silver-nanocellulose nanocomposites were produced using various approaches for different applications including Surface-enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) sensing and catalytic reaction in the decomposition of organic compounds in water.

Chin Hua Chia is currently Associate Professor in the Materials Science Programme, School of Applied Physics, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). He obtained his Ph.D. in 2007 in Materials Science (UKM, Malaysia). His core research interests include developing nanomaterials and nanocomposites. His latest H-index is 25 and he has published more than 120 research articles, 3 books, 5 book chapters and more than 60 conference proceedings. Chia is currently Editor of Sains Malaysiana and Editor-in-Chief of Polymer Research Journal (Nova Publishers). He received the Best Young Scientist Award (2012) and the Excellent Service Award (2013) from UKM. He also received the Young Scientist Award from the Malaysian Solid State Science and Technology (MASS) in November 2014. He has recently awarded as the Distinguished Lectureship Award by Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ).