On May 16, 2021, Ma’s group (C1 Chemistry & Technology Laboratory) and Gonglab (Energy & Catalysis Adventure Team) held a football match.Two teachers, Sheng Zhang of Ma’s group and Peng Zhang of Gonglab, took part in the friendly competition.Students of Gonglab who participated in the match were listed as follows.The first row, Xiwen Song, Shuai Wang, Ran Luo, Bin Liu.The second row, Bo Wu, X...

Cu‐based electrocatalysts can effectively facilitate carbon dioxide electrochemical reduction (CO2ER) to produce multi‐carbon products. However, the roles of Cu0 and Cu+ and the mechanistic understanding remain elusive. This paper describes the controllable construction of Cu0-Cu+ sites derived from the well‐dispersed cupric oxide supported on copper phyllosilicate lamella to enhance CO2ER p...

Bimetallic nanoparticle catalysts attract extensive attention for relevant catalysis processes due to their flexible structures, while the structure evolution under specific conditions is ambiguous. This paper describes the structure evolution of Pt-Sn bimetallic nanoparticles for catalytic dehydrogenation, especially Sn segregation for surface recovery of a Pt-Sn alloy. An acid etching-reducti...

Prof. Jinlong Gong and Prof. Chunlei Pei are invited to comment on a newly published article on Science, which is reported by Peter C. Stair and Justin M. Notestein from Northwestern University.“The methodology exemplifies the strategy of mediating the transport of key intermediates across various catalytic sites and integrating multiple reactions sequentially.”The comment: https://science.sc...

Gonglab’s 2020 annual summing-up meeting was held from January 16, 2021 to January 17, 2021.The winners of 2020 are:Special Contribution: Xianhua Zhang (PhD)Prof. Jinlong Gong, Xianhua ZhangIdea Fountain: Sai Chen (PhD), Dongfang Cheng (Master)Prof. Tuo Wang, Dongfang Cheng, Sai ChenPaper Machine: Gong Zhang (PhD), Shujie Wang (PhD), Chengsheng Yang (PhD)Prof. Chunlei Pei, Gong Zhang, Shujie W...

Quan Xiao and Jieli Wang passed their thesis defense today. Congrats!List of the thesis titles:Quan Xiao: Investigation on the modulation of supported Pt catalysts for CO oxidationJieli Wang: Structural construction and catalytic performance of Pt-Sn catalysts for propane dehydrogenationAll the best to all of them!Quan XiaoJieli WangJieli Wang, Jinlong Gong, Quan XiaoChunlei Pei, Jingkun Li, Ji...

Sai Chen and Congling Hu passed their dissertation defense today. Congrats!List of the thesis titles:Sai Chen: Dehydrogenation of Propane on Metals and Metal OxidesCongling Hu: Electrochemical Water Splitting and CO2 Reduction Catalysts Design and Their Mechanism ComprehensionAll the best to all of them!Sai ChenCongling H

Shiyu Zhen, Xiwen Song, Xinyan Wang, Xian Yao, Xiaohe Liu, Yan Wang, Chenggong Jiang, Hongbo Song, Hui Gao, Hao Dong, Qingzhen Wang, Tao Liu, Lulu Li, Mengmeng Zhang, and Jiachen Sun passed their preliminary exam today. Congrats!Master studentsList of the proposal titles:Shiyu Zhen: Density Functional Theory Study on Cu-based Alloy Catalyst for CO2 ReductionXiwen Song: Mechanistic Investigation...

Prof. Zhi-Pan Liu from Fudan University, China, visited us today and gave an IREC2 lecture with the title “A new computational method based on machine learning and its application in chemical reactions”.How to design highly efficient and specific catalytic materials has always been a basic problem in physical chemistry. Among them, the characterization and deep understanding of catalyst struc...

To celebrate the 125th anniversary of Tianjin University, our team went hiking in Jinnan district.Here are the pictures

Welcome new students to join our lab!Master students: Shixuan Zhao, Tingting Yang, Xiaozhi Li, Lili Zhang, Yuan Chen, Guan Li, Xiaowei Du, Yanglang Li.PhD students: Peipei Jia, Chujun Wang, Zheyuan Ding, Shican Wu, Yixian Wang, Chaoxi Wang, Pingping Wei

Hao Tian, Xintong Yuan, Yufei Xie, Sihang Liu, Zhiqiang Chen, Rui Liu and Hongfang Li passed their dissertation defense today. Congrats!List of the thesis titles:Hao Tian: Mechanistic Investigations on Metal-Support Interaction of Ni-based Catalysts for Ethanol Steam ReformingXintong Yuan: Design and Performance of Electrocatalytic CO2 Reduction CatalystsYufei Xie: Support Effects on the Cataly...

Modulating lattice oxygen in metal oxides that conducts partial oxidation of methane in balancing C-H activation and syngas selectivity remains challenging. This paper describes the discovery of distorting FeO6 octahedra in La1-xCexFeO3 (x=0, 0.25 0.5, 0.75, 1) orthorhombic perovskites for the promotion of lattice oxygen activation. By combined electrical conductivity relaxation (ECR) measureme...

​Prof. Zhao is a recipient of “The Best Ten Graduate Advisors of Tianjin University”

Zhang Peng ’s thesis ‘Effective Charge Carrier Utilization in Semiconductor Photocatalysts’ and Xiaoxia ’s thesis ‘Catalytic System Design and Mechanism Investigation for Photoelectrocatalytic CO2 Reduction’ won the Tianjin Excellent Doctoral Dissertation！Congratulations!2019-12-3

​The grain boundary in copper-based electrocatalysts has been demonstrated to improve the selectivity of solar-driven electrochemical CO2 reduction towards multi-carbon products. However, the approach to form grain boundaries in copper is still limited. This paper describes a controllable grain growth of copper electrodeposition via poly (vinylpyrrolidone) used as an additive. A grain-boundary...

Gonglab’s 2019 Annual Summing-up Meeting was held today.The winners of 2019 are:Research Star of Gonglab:Sai Chen (PhD)Xintong Yuan (Master)Best Newcommer:Jia Yu, Hongbo Song2nd Prize of Research Stars:Bin Liu, Chengsheng Yang and Shuai Wang3rd Prize of Research Stars:Wanyu Deng, Yanan Wang, Rui Liu and Lulu LiNatrual convincer:Gong ZhangPerspective provider:Chen Zhao, Yan WangLeading goose:Xi...

On January 10, 2020, 2020 National Science and Technology Awards Conference was held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Professor Gong, as the first person, won second prize of the State Natural Science Award for “Research on the Method and Mechanism of Heterogeneous Catalyst Structure Defect Regulation”.The State Science and Technology Prizes are the highest honors conferred by the ...

Prof. Fornasiero from University of Trieste, Italy, visited us today and gave an IREC2 lecture with the title “Smart Catalysts and Today’s Energy and Environmental Challenges.”The study of catalytic processes starting from well- defined materials that are tuned in morphology, composition and shape is offering new perspectives for catalyst design. CO oxidation turned out to be crucially depen...

Foreign element doping could improve the charge transport of photoelectrodes, however, new recombination centers may be introduced. This paper describes a facile photoetching approach that alleviates the negative effects from bulk defects by confining the oxygen vacancy (O vac) at the surface of BiVO4 photoanode, via a 10‐minute photoetching. This strategy could induce enriched O vac at the su...

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!