The active sites of heterogeneous catalysts can be difficult to identify and understand, and, hence, the introduction of active sites into catalysts to tailor their function is challenging. During the past two decades, scaling relationships have been established for important, heterogeneous catalytic reactions. More specifically, a physical or chemical property of the reaction system, termed as...

Silicon-based (Si-based) junctions have been widely investigated in recent years as photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting photoelectrodes, including buried junctions and metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) Schottky junctions. However, Si-based MIS photoelectrodes suffer from low performance for PEC oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) because of the dilemma...

Five Students Win 2019 National Scholarship!Posted on 2019-11-13Congratulate Congling Hu, Chengsheng Yang, Wanyu Deng, Xintong Yuan and Sihang Liu on receiving the National Scholarship!

Oxygen chemistry plays a pivotal role in numerous chemical, energy and environmental systems. Particularly, selective cleavage of C–H bonds by metal oxo species is highly desirable in the catalytic dehydrogenation of light alkanes. However, high selectivity of alkene is usually hampered through consecutive oxygenation reactions in conventional oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) scheme. Herein, we...

Dr. Xiaoxia Chang won silver award for Ph.D. thesis in chemical engineering and material!This award was founded by Shandong Chambroad HoldingGroup Co., Ltd., which aim is to reward outstanding Ph.D. thesises in Chemical engineering and material.Dr. Xiaoxia Chang received his Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering  2018, under the supervision of ProfessorJinlong Gong. He is currently a postdoctora...

The peroxone reaction between O3 and H2O2 has been deemed a promising technology to resolve the increasingly serious water pollution problem by virtue of the generation of superactive hydroxyl radicals (•OH), but it suffers greatly from an extremely limited reaction rate constant under acidic conditions (ca. less than 0.1 M–1 s–1 at pH 3). This article describes a heterogeneous catalyst comp...

Prof. Gong won the first Explorer Prize!The “XPLORER PRIZE” is a non-governmental and public interest award for young scientists and technicians aged 45 and below who are working full-time on the Chinese mainland.The XPLORER PRIZE is initiated by Ma Huateng, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Tencent and founder of the Tencent Foundation, and Professor Rao Yi of Peking University in coop...

​China held a grand celebration with a military parade on October 1, the National Day, to mark the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949.Prof. Gong was invited as a guest to attend military parade and celebration

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, our team went hiking in Jinnan district.Here are the pictures:At the starting point:At the destination

​Professor Gong has been invited to join the Editorial Board of Journal of Energy Chemistry

Prof. Feng Jiao visited us today and e gave an IRCE2 Lecture named High-rate CO2 and CO electrolysis to C2+ productsThe rapid development of novel energy technologies has decreased renewable electricity prices significantly over the past decade. This foreseen cheap electricity has motivated significant research interest in the development of electrified pathways for chemical and fuel production...

Wenjin, Yihe, Piaoping, Chuanye, Li Kang and Sier passed their dissertation defense. Congrats!List of the thesis titles:Wenjin: Metal Nanocatalysts for Carbon Dioxide ElectroreductionYihe: Controllable Synthesis of High Atom Efficiency Pt-based Catalysts and their High Electrochemical Activity for Hydrogen Evolution ReactionPiaoping: Density Functional Theory Investigation of Structure-Performa...

Identification of the active structure under reaction condition is of great importance for rational design of heterogeneous catalysts, but which is often hampered due to their structural complexity. This paper describes the interplay between the surface structure of Co3O4 and the CO2 hydrogenation reaction. Experimental results combined with theoretical calculations show that the Co3O4 with mor...

A correct description of active sites is the precondition towards reaction mechanism study and catalyst screening. In many cases, high-symmetry and ideally ordered crystalline surfaces are used to represent the reactive sites. However, reaction-induced surface segregation and restructuring weaken the rationality of simply employing the suggested most stable surfaces. This paper describes an est...

The search for efficient nontoxic catalysts able to perform industrial hydrogenations is a topic of interest, transversal to many catalytic processes. This communication describes a mechanistic phenomenon of activation and spillover of hydrogen for remarkable selectivity of semi‐hydrogenation of acetylene over sub‐1 nm Pd nanoclusters confined within sodalite (SOD) zeolite (Pd@SOD). Specifica...

​Electrocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2ER) to reusable carbon resources is a significant step to balance the carbon cycle. This Communication describes a seed-mediated growth method to synthesize ultrathin Pd–Au alloy nanoshells with controllable alloying degree on Pd nanocubes. Specifically, Pd@Pd3Au7 nanocrystals (NCs) show superior CO2ER performance, with a 94% CO faraday effici...

​Catalytic reforming provides a practical technique for on-board hydrogen production in fuel cell applications. The high energy density, easy transportation and non-toxicity of biomass-derived dimethyl ether (bio-DME) offer potential to replace methanol for on-board steam reforming (SR). Presently, the reaction mechanism over conventional Cu-based SR catalysts remains elusive, limiting the rat...

The role of surface hydroxyls is significant for understanding catalytic performance of metallic oxides for CO2 electroreduction reaction (CO2ER). This Communication describes, employing SnOx as a model system, how to moderate coverage of hydroxyl to derive a stable Sn branches catalyst for CO2ER with a 93.1% Faradaic efficiency (FE) of carbonaceous products. With use of in situ attenuated tota...

On the theme of inorganic materials, Editors of Chemical Science highlighted 10 outstanding contributions published on this topic. Wanyu’s work on “Achieving Convenient Tandem of CO2Electroreduction and Photovoltage Using Potential-Independent Disordered Ag Nanoparticles.” has been selected for this collection. Congrats!

CH3OH production from photocatalytic CO2 reduction reaction (PCRR) represents a promising route for the clean utilization of renewable resources, but serious charge recombination, unsatisfied stability and poor selectivity limit its practical application. This paper describes the design and fabrication of 0D/2D materials with polymeric C3N4 nanosheets and CdSe quantum dots (QDs) to enhance the ...

Prof. Evgenii V. Kondratenko visited us today and e gave an IRCE2 Lecture named Supported VOx-based and bulk ZrO2-based catalysts for alkane dehydrogenation: Active sites, design and performance.Prof. Evgenii V. Kondratenko (Rubtsovsk, Russia, 1967) graduated from the Novosibirsk State University in 1991 (diploma degree in chemistry with specialisation in chemical kinetics). He earned his PhD (...

​Gonglab’s 2018 Annual Summing-up Meeting was held today.The winners of 2018 are:Research Star of Gonglab:Guodong Sun (PhD)Wenjin Zhu (Master)Best Newcommer:Sihang Liu2nd Prize of Research Stars:Congling Hu, Sai Chen and Gong Zhang3rd Prize of Research Stars:Jieli Wang, Yanan Wang, Piaoping Yang and Bin Li

Yijin Kang studied chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania under supervision of Prof. Christopher Murray, after a short industrial experience at Global Research, General Electric. He received his Ph.D. in 2012. From 2012 to 2015, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Argonne National Laboratory (USA), with Dr. Vojislav Stamenkovic and Dr. Nenad Markovic. Since 2015, he is a Professo...

Hao Dong passed his dissertation defense today. Congrats!His thesis title: Facet effects on noble metal nanometarials for CO2 electroreduction

This award set by Tianjin University is regarded as Nobel Prize for students (Annually elect ~2 among ~10000 master students), aiming to award students with outstanding academic or research output and encourage more students to be creative and progressive. Wenjin entered Gonglab as a recommended postgraduate (TOP 5%) since 2016 and behaved impressively on scientific researches. The impact facto...

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) CO2 reduction reaction (CRR) in aqueous medium is among the most promising methods to produce renewable fuel with solar and water as the energy and electron source. But the high negative bias remains a prerequisite to achieve an appreciable conversion at present due to the large overpotential of CO2 reduction. This communication describes PEC CRR with low onset potent...

Dr. Jinxun Liu, from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, visited our lab today. He gave an IRCE2 Lecture named The Theoretical Study of the Activity of Nano-catalyst.He uses density functional theory based on quantum mechanics and massively parallel computing to research the catalytic reactions which have national strategic significance. In view of the atomic scale, he explores crystal phase...

​Welcome Asso. Prof. Chunlei Pei to join our lab! Dr. Pei's research interest is in powder and multi-phase technologies for applications in heterogeneous catalysis, and he is willing to share his research experience with our group members.

Artificial photosynthesis can store solar energy and reduce CO2 into fuels to potentially alleviate global warming and energy crisis. Compared to gas products, it remains a grand challenge to tune the product distribution of artificial photosynthesis to liquid fuels, such as CH3OH, that are suitable for storage and transport. This paper describes the introduction of metallic Cu nanoparticles (N...

Due to the existence of scaling properties of adsorption energies on transition metal surfaces, the enhancement of the catalytic activity is frequently accompanied by side reactions leading to a reduction in selectivity for the target product. Herein, by systematically screening Pt alloy materials using density functional theory calculations, we developed an approach to breaking the scaling rel...

Prof. Liang-Shih Fan, from the The Ohio State University, visited our lab today. He gave an IRCE2 Lecture named Metal Oxide Reaction Engineering and Chemical Looping Technology for Fossil Energy Conversion。Metal oxide composites are enabling materials in a variety of energy conversion systems such as solid oxide fuel cells, ionic transport membranes, solar cells, batteries, light emitting diod...

Congratulate Congling Hu, Wenjin Zhu and Piaoping Yang on receiving the National Scholarship!

Prof. Notker Rösch, from the Institute of High Performance Computing of the Agency of Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), visited our lab today. He gave an IRCE2 Lecture named Reduced Centers of the MoVOx Catalyst for Hydrocarbon Oxidation. To Localize or not to Localize, That is the Question.Professor Notker Rösch is the head of the Catalysis Modelling Group at the Institute of High Per...

We are excited to welcome 27 new graduate students to the Energy & Catalysis Adventure Team. They are Dongfang Cheng, Engr.Bilal Fareed, Hui Gao, Zichen Gong, Hui Ke, Zhuo Li, Xiaoyun Lin, Yan Lin, Zhenpu Lu, Ran Luo, Jian Qin, Mingxue Shi, Zi Shi, Shijia Sun, Qingzhen Wang, Tianzuo Wang, Yang Wang, Yongtao Wang, Zhongyan Wang, Bo Wu, Yang Wu, Yiyi Xu, Jiachuan Yu, Tenghui Yuan, Tingting Zhang,...

Rose Zhu and Brandon Sutherland, from Joule, visited our lab today. They gave an IRCE2 Lecture named Energy Research & High Impact Publishing in Joule.Dr. Rose Zhu(朱昌荣) is the Associate Editor for Joule based out of Shanghai office. She started her Ph.D. study at Nanyang Technological University (NTU, Singapore) under Prof. Hong Jin FAN in 2012 after received BSc degree in Sichuan University...

Prof. Anton P.J. Middelberg, from The University of Adelaide, visited our lab today. He gave an IRCE2 Lecture named Bio-inspired Approaches to Interfacial Chemical Engineering.Professor Anton Middelberg is the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences at The University of Adelaide. Prior to this he was Pro Vice Chancellor (Research and International) and A...

Electro-reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) is a promising way to curb the excessive CO2 emission and produce value-added products. Gold-copper (AuCu) alloys are known to exhibit eminent CO production performance towards CO2ER. However, it still remains a grand challenge to balance *COOH and *CO bonding and to further descend CO onset potential. This paper describes the construction of Cu vacanci...

Water splits into hydrogen and oxygen electrochemically is one of the most promising strategies for the utilization and storage of solar energy. However, oxygen evolution reaction (OER) with sluggish kinetics hinders its larger-scale application. NiFe-based catalysts are one of the most efficient oxygen evolution catalysts (OECs). High-valence Ni is considered as active site or conductive frame...

Congratulations! Prof. Gong is elected as a vice chair for Gordon Research Conference for Green Chemistry.Gordon Research Conferences are a group of prestigious international scientific conferences organized by a non-profit organization of the same name. The conference topics cover frontier research in the biological, chemical, and physical sciences, and their related technologies. The conferen...