Session: Advances in Renewable Energy and Fuels:

The global energy crisis and environmental problems drive the aggressive search for a clean and renewable energy source to replace fossil fuels. The production of clean and carbon-free hydrogen energy from inexhaustible solar energy through photocatalytic water splitting is a ‘dream technology’ to address the worldwide energy shortage, environmental contamination and the greenhouse effect. The core challenge of this advanced technology lies in the development of low-cost and environmentally benign photocatalysts with sufficiently high activity and stability to produce hydrogen at a cost comparable to the conventional fossil fuels. Recently, emerging two-dimensional (2D) materials such as MXene, phosphorene, 2D metal-organic framework (MOF) and ReS₂ have attracted tremendous attention due to their outstanding characteristics of ultrathin thickness, large surface area, high-aspect ratio and abundant active sites. Therefore, the rational design and synthesis of 2D materials based photocatalysts to achieve efficient and stable light-induced H₂ production is highly promising. Furthermore, both advanced characterizations (e.g., aberration-corrected atomic-resolution transmission electron microscopy, synchrotron-based X-ray absorption spectroscopy and femtosecond fluorescence spectroscopy) and density functional theory based theoretical computations are adopted to investigate the atomic-level structure/composition-performance relation in photocatalysts. Finally, a general principle to develop high-performance photocatalysts for efficient solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion is concluded.

Shizhang Qiao

Appearances