Topic：Material Design of Catalysts for Electrochemical Energy Applications
Speaker：Prof. Hong Yang, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
Time：6月13日（周三）上午10:00
Venus：机械与动力工程学院A楼 F-310
Inviter：章俊良教授（机动学院燃料电池研究所）

Abstruct：
Nanomaterials are important for the design of electrocatalysts for fuel cell and battery applications. In the past several years, low temperature hydrogen fuel cells for automotive applications have witnessed tremendous progress.1-2 Now the major automotive companies are gearing towards the commercial production of fuel cell hybrid vehicles (FCHV) in 2015. A major driving force for this rapid development lies in the rapid progress made for creating active cathode catalysts for proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC). I will present our recent work on the design and synthesis of Pt bimetallic and multimetallic nanostructures with controlled composition and shape, which are important structural parameters for electrocatalysis, including a new synthetic approach to the shape control of Pt alloys based on the gas reducing agent in liquid solution (GRAILS) method using CO as reducing agent.3 I will show the underlying formation principles and advantages of using faceted, core-shell and other heterogeneous nanostructures. Structure-property relationship in selective systems, such as {111} faceted Pt3Ni nanocrystals electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and fuel molecule oxidation reaction will also be discussed.
 
References：
(1) Peng Z. M. & Yang, H. Nano Today, 2009, 4, 143-164.
(2) Wagner, F. T.; Lakshmanan, B.; & Mathias, M. F. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2010, 1, 2204-2219
(3) Wu, J. B., Gross, A. & Yang, H. Nano Lett. 2011, 11, 798-802.

 
Introduction of speaker：
Professor Hong Yang received a B.S. degree from Tsinghua University in 1989 and a Ph.D. degree in inorganic chemistry from University of Toronto in 1998. He won one of the two Doctoral Prizes in Natural Sciences from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) upon his graduation. He went to Harvard University and worked as an NSERC postdoctoral fellow with Professor George M. Whitesides on soft lithography for nanofabrication from 1998 to 2001. He began his independent research at University of Rochester in July 2001 and went through the academic ranks there before he joined the faculty of University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) as a Full Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in January 1st, 2012. 

Dr. Yang is a National Science Foundation CAREER Award recipient. He is a Section Editor on Nanotechnology for Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering, serves as Guest Editors for Advanced Materials, Accounts of Chemical Research and other top-rated journals, and on editorial boards for half-dozen journals including Nano Today. He is a continuing Symposia Chair (2009-prsent, second term) for American Chemical Society, Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry, Symposium on Nanoparticles and Nanostructured Materials. He has published more than eighty-five refereed publications that have been cited in 5600+ times and received an H-index of 37. He holds five US patents and two more that are pending. His research interests include shape control of nanocrystals, surface modification, fuel cell and battery electrocatalysts, and nanomaterials for energy and biological applications.