Qiang Sun
Peking University, China
Title: Rational design of novel Cu-containing catalysts for effective CO2 conversion
Biography
Biography: Qiang Sun
Abstract
The environmental pollution caused by massive carbon dioxide emissions has become one of the main obstacles to the national health and economic development. It is now an urgent problem to develop novel CO2 conversion catalysts. According to current research, Cu electrode is reported to be the best CO2 reduction catalyst among the commonly used metal electrodes. However, bulk Cu electrode is also faced with a few problems like high overpotential, poor selectivity on products and low reaction efficiency due to scaling relationships. In order to develop new Cu-based CO2 reduction catalysts, we will focus on geometric optimization of low dimensional nanomaterials and study their catalytic performances. The introduction of Cu atom, Cu2 dimer, Cu nanowires and nano-flakes to one or two dimensional organic or inorganic systems may bring unique catalytic characteristic and break the limits of bulk Cu electrode. These well-distributed Cu nanostructures are easier to controll and may show novel physical and chemical effects including size effect, geometric effect, substrate effect, magnetic effect, curvature effect and spatial confinement effect, which may improve CO2 catalytic reduction.