Prof. Jingguang Chen from Columbia University Visits SCET

Prof. Jingguang Chen from Columbia University has visited the School of Chemical Engineering and Technology and delivered a seminar on April 24th, 2014 on Design of Catalyst and Electrocatalysts for Energy Applications.

In his talk he presents two examples to demonstrate the importance of using surface science studies to identify catalysts and electrocatalysts. His research approaches involve parallel efforts in density functional theory (DFT) calculations, surface science experiments on model systems, and synthesis and evaluation of supported catalysts under thermochemical or electrochemical conditions. His group first use water electrolysis to demonstrate the feasibility of using monolayer Pt on tungsten carbide (WC) to achieve the same activity as bulk Pt. We will present DFT calculations of similar electronic and chemical properties between monolayer Pt/WC and Pt, synthesis and characterization of monolayer Pt/WC films, and electrochemical evaluation of the activity and stability of Pt/WC for water electrolysis. Comparing to the leading Pt electrocatalyst, the monolayer Pt/WC represents a reduction by a factor of ten in Pt loading. He also presents recent results on precious-metal free electrocatalysts for hydrogen oxidation and CO2 reduction reactions.

Jingguang Chen is the Thayer Lindsley Professor of chemical engineering at Columbia University.  He received his BS degree in chemistry from Nanjing University and was selected to study in the USA in the China-USA Chemistry Graduate Program (CGP).  He received his PhD degree from the University of Pittsburgh, followed by a Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship in Germany.   After spending several years as a staff scientist at Exxon Corporate Research he started his academic career at the University of Delaware, serving as the director of the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology and the Claire LeClaire Professor of chemical engineering.  He moved to Columbia University in 2012. He has elected for several leadership positions in the catalysis societies, including being the Chair of the Gordon Conference on Catalysis, the Director-at-Large of the North American catalysis Society, and the Chair of the Catalysis Division in the American Chemical Society.  He has co-authored 19 US patents and 280 journal articles in journals including Science, Chemical Reviews, and Journal of Catalysis that have been cited over 9,000 times. He is an editor of Applied Surface Science and Surface Science Reports and serves on the editorial board of Langmuir and Surface Science.