Liming Dai
简 历:Liming Dai joined Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in fall 2009 as the Kent Hale Smith Professor in the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering. He is also director of the Center of Advanced Science and Engineering for Carbon (CASE4Carbon) at CWRU and the BUCT-CWRU International Joint Laboratory. Dr. Dai received a BSc degree from Zhejiang University in 1983, and a PhD from the Australian National University in 1991. He accepted a postdoctoral fellowship from the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and two years later became a visiting fellow in Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He spent 10 years with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Melbourne, Australia. Before joining the CWRU, he was an associate professor of polymer engineering at the University of Akron and the Wright Brothers Institute Endowed Chair Professor of Nanomaterials at the University of Dayton.
Dr. Dai’s expertise covers the synthesis, functionalization, and device fabrication of conjugated polymers and carbon nanomaterials for energy-related and biomedical applications. He has published more than 500 scientific papers, and held about 30 issued/applied patents. He has an h-index of 135 and citations over 68,000 (Google Scholar). He has also published a research monograph on intelligent macromolecules and 6 edited/co-edited books on carbon nanomaterials for advanced energy systems and biomedical applications. Dr. Dai serves as an Associate Editor of Nano Energy (Elsevier) and editorial board member of many international journals. He is a Highly Cited Researcher (Chemistry, Materials) and has received various awards, including the International Union of Materials Research Societies’ 2019 IUMRS-Somiya Award, 2018 NASA-Langley Henry J.E. Reid Award, 2016 CWRU Faculty Distinguished Research Award, 2013 Zhejiang Science and Technology Award, 2013 Zhejiang Biomedical Technology Award, 2006 Ohio Outstanding Engineer and Scientist Award, and 2006 George Noland Research Award from Sigma Xi. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).
题 目:Ten Years of Metal-free Carbon Electrocatalysts
摘 要:Catalysis is a major field in science and engineering. Among the numerous catalytic reactions, the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are critical for clean and renewable energy technologies. While these reactions show great promise toward solving global energy and environmental challenges, they normally require noble-metal-based catalysts (e.g., Pt, Pd, RuO2, IrO2). The high cost of precious metal-based catalysts and their limited reserve have precluded these renewable energy technologies from large-scale applications. Therefore, it is highly desirable to develop alternative catalysts with superior electrocatalytic performance, compared to noble-metal-based catalysts, and are also readily available and cost effective with additional potential attributes beyond those of current-generation metal catalysts.
In 2009, we demonstrated that nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (N-CNTs) could be used as heteroatom-doped metal-free carbon electrocatalysts to replace Pt for the ORR in fuel cells. The improved catalytic performance was attributed to the doping-induced charge transfer from carbon atoms adjacent to the nitrogen atoms to change the chemisorption mode of O2 and to readily attract electrons from the anode for facilitating the ORR. Subsequently, it was also found that various graphitic carbon materials, doped with heteroatoms of different electronegativities from that of carbon atom, physically adsorbed with certain polyelectrolytes, and even without any apparent dopant or physically adsorbed polyelectrolyte, could exhibit good ORR performance. More recent studies have further demonstrated that certain heteroatom-doped carbon nanomaterials could act as metal-free bifunctional electrocatalysts for ORR/OER in metal-air batteries for energy storage, and even ORR/OER/HER trifunctional electrocatalysts for self-powered water-splitting to generate hydrogen fuel and oxygen gas from water, leading to a large variety of low-cost, highly-efficient and multifunctional electrocatalysts for clean and renewable energy technologies.
Great progress has been made since the first metal-free carbon electrocatalyst was discovered over 10 years ago. In this talk, I will summarize some of our work on the development of metal-free carbon electrocatalysts for various energy-related reactions, along with an overview on the recent advances and perspectives in this exciting field.