Time: October 30th, 2017, 10:00-12:00am
Venue: Conference Room on first floor in No.1 Energy Building
Lecturer: Dr. LIANG Ji, Institute of Superconducting & Electronic Materials, the University of Wollongong, Australia
Abstract:
Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is the key reaction, which controls the overall performance of a variety of state-of-the-art devices, such as low-temperature fuel cells, lithium-air batteries, and oxygen detectors, etc. However, the ORRs in these devices are almost exclusively catalysed by Pt or its alloys, which are expensive, low-reserved, unstable, and environmentally unfriendly. Consequently, the commercialization of these promising energy storage/conversion devices has been severely hindered. With the purpose of solving these problems, extensive studies have been conducted in the exploration for an alternative metallic catalyst without Pt, which could be viable from the economical viewpoint. At the meantime, increasing attentions have also been paid to seeking for another class of metal-free catalysts, which are expected to be cheap, stable, and comparably active as Pt-based materials for ORR.
Here in this seminar, a series of our works, focused on the novel porous carbons decorated with multiple heteroelements or other active materials (graphite carbon nitride, g-C3N4) as highly active catalyst for ORR, will be presented. These new catalysts show very good ORR performance, which is closely comparable with commercial Pt/C. Besides, they also possess outstanding long-term durability and complete tolerance to fuel cross-over effect. All these excellent features make our materials promising candidates for the next generation energy devices.
These precisely-designed and carbon-based functional nanomaterials can also be transferred to the application of energy storage, due to their unique surface and structural characteristics. For example, a catalytic effect has also been observed on these materials when they are deployed in a Li-S battery, which has led to significant enhancement in the battery performance, including larger capacity, higher efficiency, and better cycling stability.
Introduction:
Dr. LIANG Ji obtained his Ph.D degree from the University of Adelaide, under the support from China Scholarship Council (CSC) Program. Following that, his research was supported by the T. S. Ke Scheme by the Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His is currently a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow, funded by the Australian Research Council (ARD), at the Institute for Superconducting & Electronic Materials, the University of Wollongong, Australia. His current research interest focuses on the multifunctional carbon nanomaterials for energy storage and conversion (e.g.non-noble-metalelectrocatalysis, lithium-sulfur batteries, and lithium ion batteries). By rationally designing materials’ microstructure and surface chemistry, Dr. Liang has developed a series of high performance materials for these applications. At the meantime, the mechanisms of theinteresting reaction/catalysis characteristics of these materials have also been investigated by theoretical simulations.
In the last five years, Dr. LIANG has published a series of papers in Angew. Chem.、Adv. Mater.、Energy Environ. Sci.、J. Am. Chem. Soc.、Appl. Catal. B: Environ.、Energy Storage Mater.、Part. Part. Syst. Char., on this topic, as well as a number of book chapters. These publications have been cited for over 3400 times.
Contact: TANG Xiaolu Group 05T7
Phone: 82463721