The State Key Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry (SKLCC) was founded and started receiving applications from both domestic and foreign researchers in 1990. The official approval as the state key laboratory came in 1991. The SKLCC has been awarded “A-level” laboratory by the United Evaluation Committee of the country in 1995. It ranks in top ten among all the state key laboratories of chemistry and chemical engineering during the countrywide evaluations in 1999, 2004 and 2009, respectively.

The SKLCC has 38 faculty members, including 27 professors, 8 associate professors and one academician of the Chinese Academy of Science (Prof. Xiao-Zeng YOU). The laboratory is well equipped with most of the modern analytical instruments and a well-trained technical team is capable of providing all required services for research. The SKLCC has been focusing mainly on the basic researches covering the key areas of coordination chemistry: functional coordination chemistry, bio-inorganic chemistry, organometallics, nano-science as well as the surface and interface chemistry. The researches are closely relevant to the material science and life science. A series of research achievements have been accomplished in the synthesis and characterization of coordination compounds with electric, optical, magnetic, and biological properties, and in the assembly of supramolecular compounds and nano-sized materials. The laboratory has won several major national natural science awards and many other ministerial or provincial awards. Each year since its establishment more than 200 research papers are published in the world-recognized journals .