Research

Humanity is on the brink of fossil fuel exhaustion and faces the challenge of environmental destruction. The concept of closed-loop recycling is to capture environmental pollutants in the air (e.g., CO2) and water (e.g., nitrates) and convert them together with abundant molecules such as N2, O2, and H2O into fuels or chemical building blocks. Such reactions hold the advantage of accomplishing environmental purification simultaneously with the generation of energy or value-added products. Thus, closed-loop recycling is a promising strategy for energy and environmental sustainability. The lack of effective capturing systems and the weakness of catalyst materials are significant challenges limiting the development of this technology. Utilizing renewable electricity or sunlight via electrocatalytic or photocatalytic reactions can in principle allow for sustainable closed-loop recycling. Significant opportunities exist in the development of advanced materials for heterogeneous photo/electrocatalysis that show excellent activity and selectivity at high absolute rates. My research group aims to leverage innovative materials science, chemistry, and mechanical engineering approaches to develop an understanding of photo/thermal/electrochemical reactions at large-scale reactions that can be integrated with effective capturing systems.