CBE Seminar: Gang Wu, Washington University “Single-Metal-Site Catalysts for Sustainable Hydrogen Energy: History, Present, and Future”
Content
Host: Nianqiang Wu
Abstract:
Fossil fuels have been used overwhelmingly across many industrial sectors in recent decades, leading to significant CO2 and other pollutant emissions, low efficiency, and unsustainability. Clean and efficient energy storage and conversion via electrochemical reactions associated with hydrogen, oxygen, and water have attracted substantial attention for energy and environmental sustainability. Among compelling energy technologies, proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are a promising zero-emission power source for transportation, helping mitigate environmental pollution and reduce fossil-fuel dependence. Meanwhile, water electrolyzers have been clearly identified as the sustainable pathway to produce cheap green hydrogen efficiently using renewable electricity. However, current materials, including catalysts, membranes, and ionomers, cannot meet the challenging targets of high efficiency, low cost, and long-term durability for hydrogen fuel cells and water electrolyzers. Developing high-performance catalysts from earth-abundant elements to replace current precious metals is crucial for making these hydrogen technologies viable for large-scale clean energy applications. This talk discusses recent advances, achievements, and perspectives on developing low-cost, high-performance catalysts based on newly emerging atomically dispersed single-metal-site-rich metal-nitrogen-carbon materials for sustainable, clean hydrogen technologies.
Bio:
Gang Wu is the Elvera and William R. Stuckenberg Endowed Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He is an ECS Fellow and has substantial expertise in electrochemical science and engineering. He completed all his degrees, including Ph.D., at the Harbin Institute of Technology in 2004. After extensive postdoctoral training at Tsinghua University, the University of South Carolina, and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), he became a staff scientist at LANL in 2010. Then, he joined SUNY Buffalo as a tenure-track assistant professor in 2014 and was quickly promoted to associate professor in 2018 and to full professor in 2020.
After a decade of service at SUNY Buffalo, he joined Washington University in St. Louis in 2024. His current research focuses on advanced electrocatalysis and catalysis for hydrogen and electrochemical energy technologies, such as polymer electrolyte fuel cells, water electrolysis, CO2 reduction, electrosynthesis, and carbon-free nitrogen electrochemistry. He is also interested in developing clean-energy-related heterogeneous catalysis, including efficient ammonia synthesis and cracking, to address the grand challenges of hydrogen storage and transportation. Dr. Wu is a leading scientist in the exploration of single-metal-site catalysts for sustainable electrocatalysis, as evidenced by more than 400 papers in prestigious journals and approximately 70,000 citations, with an H-index of 142 (Google Scholar ).
Dr. Wu has been recognized by Clarivate Analytics as a Highly Cited Researcher since 2018. He serves as an Associate Editor for a few journals, including the Journal of the Electrochemical Society (JES), the Electrochemical Society’s flagship journal, and Applied Catalysis B: Environment and Energy.