- Materials for energy and environmental applications
I am very interested in the application of materials in the vast field of renewable energy, energy storage, and environmental remediation. I have assembled and tested materials for the application of solar water splitting (hydrogen generation), photocatalysis (organic pollutant degradation), and lithium-ion battery. Some highlight is demonstrated below.
The role of nanostructures for solar hydrolysis of water is elucidated via differently patterned anatase TiO2 films. It is demonstrated that different scales of electronic circus (localized micro-circus vs. full electrolysis cell) have different requirement of beneficial structures. The relations between nanostructure, electrochemical property and device performance was investigated.
Plasmonic effect of noble metal nanoparticles greatly enhanced the interaction of materials with visible light, and this effect is put into use of photocatalysis for organic dye degradation. We first developed plasmonic Ag/Ag-halide photocatalysts anchored on titanate nanostructured support. These hybrid structures have synergistic effect benefiting from the strong base-dye interaction and the plasmonic visible-light-responsiveness for enhanced pollutant removal. Free-standing Ag@AgCl hollow cubic cage photocatalysts are further developed via a sacrificial salt core method with superior performance. With femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy, we realized that an ultrafast electron transfer process between Ag and AgCl was responsible for the effectiveness of this hybrid structure.
Relevant publications:
Energy Storage Mater., 2019, 17, 151.
RSC Adv., 2015, 5, 79479.
Adv. Energy Mater., 2013, 3, 1368.
Adv. Funct. Mater., 2013, 23, 2932.
RSC Adv., 2012, 2, 9406.
ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 2012, 4, 438.
- Condensed matter and materials physics
Developing and understanding materials structures relevant to condensed matter physics has also been a focus of me. Some interest has been on how crystal structure and crystal chemistry affect magnetic, optical and electronic properties. Example systems include mixed valence Cu4O3 (who has spin-1/2 pyrochlore magnetic sublattice and is the 3-D analog to herbertsmithite) and spin-ladder KFe2S3. Both of these antiferromagnets have their magnetism investigated upon.
Relevant publications:
CrystEngComm, 2019, 21, 2718.
J. Solid State Chem., 2018, 260, 1.
Chem. Mater., 2016, 28, 3080.