​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...