Title: Oxygen Electrocatalysis on Transition Metal Spinel Oxides
Reporter：Zhichuan Xu
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University
Solar Fuels Laboratory, Nanyang Technological University

Time: 16：00-17 : 30 23th February 2017

Adress : 202 Lujiaxi Building，Xiamen University

Abstract：
Exploring efficient and low cost oxygen electrocatalysts for ORR and OER is critical for developing renewable energy technologies like fuel cells, metal-air batteries, and water electrolyzers. This presentation will presents a systematic study on oxygen electrocatalysis (ORR and OER) of transition metal spinel oxides.[1] Starting with a model system of Mn-Co spinel, the presentation will introduce the correlation of oxygen catalytic activities of these oxides and their intrinsic chemical properties. The catalytic activity was measured by rotating disk technique and the intrinsic chemical properties were probed by synchrotron X-ray absorption techniques. It was found that molecular orbital theory is able to well-explain their activities.[2,3] The attention was further extended from cubic Mn-Co spinels to tetragonal Mn-Co spinels and it was found that the molecular theory is again dominant in determining the catalytic activies. This mechanistic principle is further applied to explain the ORR/OER activities of other spinels containing other transition metals (Fe, Ni, Zn, Li, and etc.).

References
[1] Wei C, Feng Z, Scherer G, Barber J, Shao-Horn Y, Xu Z, submitted.
[2] Suntivich J, Gasteiger, HA, Yabuuchi, N, Nakanishi H, Goodenough, JB, Shao-Horn, Y. Nat. Chem. 3 (2011) 546.
[3] Suntivich J, May KJ, Gasteiger HA, Goodenough JB, Shao-Horn Y, Science 334 (2011) 1383.
[4] Wei C, Feng Z, Baisariyev M, Yu L, Zeng L, Wu T, Zhao H, Huang Y, Bedzyk M, Sritharan T, Xu Z, Chemistry of Materials, 2016, 28, 4129–4133.

Curriculum Vitae：
Dr. Zhichuan XU received his PhD degree at 2008 and B.S. degree at 2002 in Electroanalytical Chemistry from Lanzhou University, China. His PhD training was received in Lanzhou University (2002-2004), Institute of Physics, CAS (2004-2005), and Brown University (2005-2007). Since 2007, he worked in State University of New York at Binghamton as a Research Associate and from 2009 he worked in Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Postdoctoral Researcher. In Oct. 2012, Dr. Xu joined the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University as an assistant professor. His research interests include electrochemistry fundamentals, catalysis, energy storage, sensors, and etc.

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