Knowledge-Driven Catalyst Design for Ammonia Synthesis
Sun Chenghua
Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology, Center for Translational Atomaterials, University of Swinburne,
Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia.
EXTENDED ABSTRACT: Ammonia is the basic chemical for modern society, supporting the food supply through fertilizer industry. Current production is based on energy-extensive Habor-Bosch process, resulting severe carbon emission and energy consumption. Under such context, we worked on the catalyst design for room temperature ammonia synthesis. This talk covers our efforts in the development of metal-based catalysts [1,2], single-atom catalysts [3,4] and p-block catalysts [5,6]. A basic strategy in our work is the computer-aided design via a step-wise routine, specifically obtaining energy profiles from elementary steps and formulating modification approach to address the key challenges in nitrogen reduction.
REFERENCES
[1] Azofra, L. M., et al. Energy Environ. Sci. 2016, 9, 2545-2549.
[2] Zhou, F. L., et al. Energy Environ. Sci. 2017, 10, 2516-2520.
[3] Liu, C.W., et al. J. Mater. Chem. A. 2019, 7, 4771-4776.
[4] Wang, X., et al. Adv. Mater. 2020, 32, 2004382.
[4] Liu, C.W., et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2019, 141, 2884.
[5] Wang, W., et al. Angew. Chem. Inter. Ed. 2019, 58, 16644-16650.
Dr Chenghua Sun graduated from Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2007 and then joined the University of Queensland as postdoc fellow. In 2013, Dr Sun joined the School of Chemistry, Monash University as a lecturer and established his group on Computer-Aided Catalyst Design. Later, Dr Sun was awarded ARC Future Fellow and joined Swinburne University of Technology in 2017. His research focuses on catalyst design for clean energy and environment applications, particularly for ammonia synthesis at room temperature, efficient methane combustion and biomass conversion.