Materials Innovation for Building a Net-zero Emission Future
Guest Speaker：Distinguished Professor Guoxiu Wang，University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia.
Inviter: Prof. Luo Jiayan
Monday，11. December
14:30-16:00
Yiucheng Lecture Hall (500), Xu Zuyao Building
Biography
Guoxiu Wang is the Director of the Centre for Clean Energy Technology and a Distinguished Professor at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. Professor Wang is an expert in materials chemistry, electrochemistry, energy storage and conversion, and battery technologies. Currently, he serves as an Associate Editor for Electrochemical Energy Reviews (Springer-Nature), and an Associate Editor for Energy Storage Materials (Elsevier). His research interests include lithium-ion batteries, lithium-air batteries, sodium-ion batteries, lithium-sulfur batteries, and electrocatalysis for hydrogen production. Professor Wang has published more than 700 refereed journal papers. His publications have attracted over 73,000 citations with an h-index of 148 (Google Scholar). He has been recognised as a highly cited researcher in Materials Science and Chemistry by Web of Science/Clarivate Analytics. Professor Wang is an elected Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (EurASc), a Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).
Abstract
Global warming and climate change is the biggest challenge facing humanity in the 21st century. My centre mainly focuses on developing efficient energy devices for sustainable energy production, storage, and conversion.
In this talk, I will briefly introduce my team’s achievements in several key sustainable energy technologies through rational materials design and innovative materials synthesis. These include (i) Electrochemical catalysts for green hydrogen production. Single-atom catalysts offer a pathway to cost-efficient catalysis with the minimal amount of precious metal used but creating them and keeping them stable during operation is a challenge. Double transition-metal MXene nanosheets, Mo2TiC2Tx were fabricated with abundant exposed basal planes and Mo vacancies in the outer layers by electrochemical exfoliation. The developed catalyst exhibits an outstanding catalytic ability with a low overpotential and a mass activity about 40 times greater than the commercial platinum-on-carbon catalyst; (ii) Lithium-ion and lithium-air batteries for electrification of road transport such as electric vehicles. I will report a recent development on an ionic liquid bearing the redox active 2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-1-piperidinyloxy moiety, which serves multiple functions as a redox mediator, oxygen shuttle, lithium anode protector, as well as electrolyte solvent. The additive contributes a 33-fold increase of the discharge capacity in comparison to a pure ether-based electrolyte; (iii) Low-cost rechargeable batteries for grid-scale renewable energy. Sodium-based batteries are being considered as a promising system for low-cost stationary energy storage and conversion, owing to the natural abundance of sodium. Several electrode materials and electrolytes were synthesized for sodium metal batteries and sodium-sulfur batteries; (iv) Rational design of electrolyte systems for improving the safety of high-energy batteries; and (v) Facile and sustainable recycling of spend lithium-ion batteries.