Time：Aug 12, 2015 14:00 PM
Location: DNL conference room on the first floor of Energy building No.1
Reporter：Dr Junwang Tang, FRSC
Department of Chemical Engineering, University College London, UK,
junwang.tang@ucl.ac.uk http://www.ucl.ac.uk/chemeng/people/tang
Solar energy has the potential to meet a significant fraction, if not all, of the increasing global energy demands. Among the approaches of solar energy conversion and storage, water splitting to renewable hydrogen and CO2 photoreduction by sunlight have been attracting more and more attention over the last ten years after a long-term silence. Solar irradiance is diffuse and intermittent, thus solar energy utilisation requires economically viable conversion technologies to be both efficient and low cost.
To achieve an efficient photocatalyst for solar energy storage remains a big challenge, involving Material Science, Chemistry, Engineering and Physics. Recently we preliminarily illustrated the key factors dominating solar energy conversion efficiency in the solar driven water splitting.1 Stimulated by these outcomes, we further developed novel material strategies for solar driven hydrogen synthesis and CO2 reduction. In this lecture, I will present the recent results obtained in my group including the facets controlled Ag3PO4 which shows the highest activity for water photooxidation reaction under visible light.2 On the other hand, highly polymerised C3N4 demonstrates an extremely high H2 production rate from water, leading to a 26% quantum efficiency,3 one order of magnitude increase compared with the previous report.4 Furthermore, pure water splitting for simultaneous H2 and O2 evolution by an organic semiconductor based system in a suspensions solution has been firstly demonstrated.5 In parallel, junction structure for CO2 photoreduction to CO under visible light irradiation will be addressed in the lecture.6
References:
1.Tang, J., Durrant, J. R., & Klug, D. R, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2008, 130(42), 13885-13891.
2.Martin, D., Umezawa, N., Chen, X., Ye, J., & Tang, J. Energy and Environmental Science. 2013, 6 (11), 3380 – 3386
3.Martin, D.J., Qiu, K., Shevlin, S. A, Handoko, A.D., Chen, X., Guo, Z,. Tang, J., Angewandte Chemie-International Edition, 2014, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201403375R1
4.Wang, X., Maeda, K., Thomas, A.,Takanabe, K., Xin, G., Carlsson, J. M., Domen, K., Antonietti, M., Nature Materials 2008, 8, 76-80
5.Martin, D.J., Reardon, P. J. T., Moniz, S. J. A., Tang, J., Visible light-driven pure water splitting by a nature-inspired organic semiconductor based system, Journal of the American Chemical Society 2014, 136, 12568. Highlighted in Chemical & Engineer News on Sep. 10, 2014
6.An, X., Li, K., Tang, J. ChemSusChem, 2014, 4, 1086-1093.
Dr Junwang Tang is a Reader in Energy in the Department and a Fellow of the RSC. He received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from DICP in 2001. After that, he took a JSPS fellow in Japan and senior researcher in Imperial College London. In 2009, he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering, University College London as a faculty member.
He currently leads a research team including postdoctoral researchers, academic visitors and research students with financial support from UK EPSRC, Leverhulme, Royal Society, RAE, EU PF7, Qatar and so on. His research interests encompass structure-controlled nanomaterials synthesis by a flow system powered by microwave irradiation, solar H2 synthesis from water, CO2 capture and conversion to a renewable fuel, photocatalytic water treatment, microwave catalysis and biomaterials fabrication. Such studies are undertaken in parallel with the mechanistic understanding and device optimisation to address the renewable energy supply and environmental purification. His research has led to ~100 papers with >4000 citations, 8 patents and many invited lectures over the last several years. He is an Editor of Journal of Advanced Chemical Engineering, the guest Editor-in-Chief of one special issue of the International Journal of Photoenergy, 2012 and Associate Editor of Chin J. Catalysis. He also sits on the editorial board of several international journals. He is the Vice President of the Chinese Society of Chemical Science and Technology in the UK, Honorary Lecturer at Imperial College London, Adjunct Professor in Nanjing Tech University and Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Contact: Li Dan (9005)