BIOGRAPHY
Qingran Zhang is currently an Associate Professor and Distinguished Research Fellow at the School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China. He received his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Rose Amal. His research interest focuses mainly on the design of cost-effective and active catalysts for electrochemical energy conversion systems (including water splitting for green hydrogen production, oxygen reduction reaction for hydrogen peroxide synthesis and other selective electrochemical processes for resource recovery/environmental remediations) and the device development for efficient utilization of renewables.
ABSTRACT
Electrochemical oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) through a 2e- pathway provides a feasible approach for the electrosynthesis of H2O2 in an eco-friendly manner. However, the practical implementation of such method is severely restricted by the poor apparent electrocatalytic performance on the ORR cathode. To resolve this issue, we fine engineered the ORR active moieties under atomic scale, such as cobalt single atoms and polymerized boron-nitrogen-carbon composites, through rationally modifying their coordination structures and surface oxygen environment, aiming to optimize the adsorption state of ORR intermediates and suppress the other side reactions on the catalysts. As such, an improved intrinsic 2e- ORR performance was obtained, giving a high H2O2 selectivity in a wide range of pH environments. In addition to a superior intrinsic activity, efficient mass transfer is also of significant importance for securing an improved apparent H2O2 yield. In this regard, we further designed and developed a three-dimensional porous electrode structure anchored with abundant highly active moieties as obtained above. Due to the formation of abundant liquid/gas/catalysts three-phase interfaces and a rapid mass/charge transfer, a high apparent activity and H2O2 productivity were exhibited during ORR in a practical O2 electrolyzer.
