Cheng Tang

University of Adelaide, Australia

Title: Electrochemistry Accelerates Carbon Neutrality: Electrosynthesis of Chemicals and Fuels

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Biography

Dr. Tang has been focusing on the atomic-level design and engineering of nanomaterials for high-performance batteries and electrochemical production of fuels and chemicals. He has co-published 1 book, 1 book chapter and >70 refereed journal papers, including 1 ESI Hot paper (top 0.1 %), 19 ESI Highly Cited papers (top 1 %), and 8 cover-featured papers. These include 31 papers as the first/co-first author in flagship Materials & Chemistry journals including Adv. Mater. (9), Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. (2), Sci. Adv. (1), Chem. Soc. Rev. (1), Acc. Chem. Res. (1), Adv. Funct. Mater. (1), J. Mater. Chem. A (5), and others. His h-index = 45 and total citations > 8000 on Google Scholar. He has been awarded the 2020 Global Highly Cited Researcher (Clarivate Analytics), and was recognised as the World’s Top 2% Scientists (released by Stanford University). He was also awarded the 2019 Chorafas Foundation Award in Chemistry (only 5 winners worldwide), the 2018 CPCIF-Clariant CleanTech Award, NDNC2016 Young Scholar Award, China National Scholarship for Graduate Students (3 times), the Top-Grade Scholarship at Tsinghua University (10/33000), Academic Rookies of Tsinghua (10/33000), Tsinghua’s Person of the Year 2016 (10/45000), First Prize of Excellent Doctoral Dissertation, etc. He is highly honoured to give the commencement address at THU 2018 Graduate Graduation Ceremony. His research interests include:

1. nanomaterials including graphene, 2D materials, single-atom catalysts, 3D porous frameworks, high-entropy nanomaterials, etc. 
2. lithium-sulfur batteries
3. bifunctional oxygen reduction/evolution in zinc-air batteries
4. on-site/demand electrosynthesis of hydrogen peroxide
5. electrocatalytic nitrogen cycling (nitrogen reduction, nitrogen oxidation, nitrate reduction, etc.)

Abstract

Access to green, flexible and reliable energy and chemicals is the key to global sustainable development and increasing prosperity, especially in the post-COVID-19 and carbon-neutral economy. Aiming at creating changes in energy technologies and chemicals manufacturing, we proposed the electrocatalytic refinery (e-refinery) to defossilize, decarbonize and decentralize present chemical industry. We for the first time established the concept, principles, and methodologies of e-refinery. Based on it, we aim to develop new technologies that can creatively produce some key chemicals (e.g., H2, hydrogen peroxide, ammonia, formate, urea) directly from abundant sources (e.g., water, air, CO2) and powered by renewable electricity. Specifically, we developed an efficient e-refinery strategy for producing H2O2 directly from water and oxygen via two-electron oxygen reduction, which is of high flexibility to be operated in small scales and on demand. Our work innovatively engineers the structure of electrocatalysts at the molecular level, and has achieved present best activity and selectivity (> 95%) for H2O2 production in both alkaline and acidic conditions. The obtained concentration of H2O2 (> 1%) is high enough for practical applications such as disinfection and electro-Fenton water treatment. Besides, we also innovated the ammonia production technologies by electrocatalysis directly from air (N2 and O2) and water. We proposed for the first time bismuth catalysts for direct electrocatalytic nitrogen fixation into ammonia at ambient conditions. To address the significant drawbacks of tough N2 activation and poor NH3 selectivity, we developed a new two-step process through integration of plasma oxidation with electrocatalytic reduction, leading to ~2500 times higher yield and ~100% Faradaic efficiency. All the research in materials design and mechanism elucidation are achieved by combining atomic-level material engineering, electrochemical evaluation, theoretical computations, and advanced in situ characterizations.