Research interests
The group’s research is mainly engaged in the design and synthesis of inorganic nanomaterials and their applications in the fields of electrocatalysis, energy transfer, and small molecule activations, etc.. It belongs to the interdisciplinary of inorganic, materials, catalysis and energy.
In the field of heterogeneous catalysis, due to the unique physical and chemical properties of noble metals their related catalysis has received huge advances in the past decades. The size, morphology, composition and structure of the noble metals are the key factors for the design of high-performance noble metal catalysts. The important catalytic reactions include selective oxidations, selective hydrogenations, reforming reactions, CH4 conversion, CO2 conversion, etc.. Through nanomaterials synthesis technology and investigating the structure-activity relationship, series of new and efficient catalysts are expected to be developed. Due to their unique structural diversity and the highly promising catalytic properties, the design and synthesis of noble metal nanomaterials with highly controlled structures have attracted extensive research attentions.
Currently, due to the increasingly serious energy and environmental crisis, developing high-efficiency, low-emission energy conversion technologies to alleviate the energy and environmental issues is highly desirable. Among them, electrocatalysis is considered to be one of the most promising clean energy conversion method. The available electrocatalytic reactions include ORR, MOR, HOR, HER, OER, CO2RR, etc.. The potential applications of these electrocatalytic reactions largely depends on the performance of the electrocatalyst used. How to design high-performance noble metal electrocatalysts by tuning the size, composition, morphology, crystal phase, etc., so as to realize efficient energy conversion, is a highly important research topic in the fields of science, materials science and catalysis.
