(7ex) Rational Design of Material Interfaces for Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage

Ming
Gong---Postdoctoral Fellow (University of
California, Berkeley)

Research Interests:

Accelerating
increase of energy demand and fossil fuel consumption has urged the need for sustainable
energy solutions. Renewable energy has recently attracted significant attention
as alternative energy sources, but the spatial and temporal intermittency of
most renewable energy resources demands the conversion and storage of renewable
energy into other energy forms when surplus.  One of the most promising routes is to transform
renewable energy into chemical energy by either upgrading abundant resources
into high-value fuels or charging battery materials into high-energy states.
Developing new materials is crucial to improve the efficiencies of these energy
conversion systems, but is often limited by the lack of novel synthetic
methodology. An alternative strategy is to interface different disciplines from
chemistry, physics, biology and materials science, which may offer new
opportunities of discovering unique properties of known materials at new
interfaces as well as open up new routes of designing unprecedented materials with
novel interfaces. During my academic career, I have been actively pursuing for
bridging chemistry and materials science to create novel material/material or
material/molecule interfaces for electrocatalysis or
batteries. These interfaces are capable of creating special synergistic effects
between each component, leading to significantly improved efficiencies of the
energy conversion/storage systems. The sparks from interfacing chemistry and
materials science have motivated me to further explore the interdisciplinary
areas for diversifying functional materials using highly tunable chemical
tools.

Research Experience:

Postdoctoral Project:  ¡°Supramolecular porphyrin cage assembly at molecular-materials interfaces
for electrocatalysis¡±

Under supervision of Prof. Christopher J. Chang, Department
of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley

PhD Dissertation:  ¡°Novel
materials for high-performance water electrolyzer and
ultrafast battery applications.¡±

Under supervision of Prof. Hongjie Dai, Department of Chemistry, Stanford University

My academic career has span many fields related to energy
conversion and storage. During the graduate studies, I gained expertise in nanomaterial synthesis,
electrochemical/photo-electrochemical catalysis and battery assembly. During
the postdoctoral research, I was further trained on molecule synthesis for chemically tuning the catalysts. The major achievements are listed as
follow:

1)     
The discovery of
a crystalline NiFe layered double hydroxide catalyst
with high activity towards water oxidation and a NiO/Ni
hetero-structure catalyst with high activity towards water reduction led to an
alkaline water electrolyzer with <1.5 V operating
voltage for the first time using non-precious metal-based catalysts. The
durability could be further extended to 500 hours by introducing Cr₂O₃
overcoats to NiO/Ni catalysts.

2)     
The design of
highly porous graphitic materials enabled an ultrafast Al ion battery operating
in ionic liquids that was capable of delivering a voltage of ~ 2 V and  lasting hundreds/thousands
of cycles for the first time. Detailed mechanistic studies revealed that the
battery operates through intercalation/de-intercalation of chloroaluminate
anions into graphite on cathodes and deposition/dissolution of Al on anodes.

3)     
Supramolecular assembly of porphyrin cages
on metallic substrates significantly increased the activity and selectivity of
electrochemical CO reduction into C-C coupled products. The efficient
catalysis is achieved by synergistic
effect of stabilizing and transforming CO reduction intermediates inside the cage catalysts.

Future Direction: 

Catalysis plays
a central role in energy conversion and storage. Advancing towards more
complicated catalytic reaction demands highly specific catalysts like the
enzymes evolved by nature; however, it remains a grand challenge to either
design enzyme-like catalysts with high specificity through bottom-up approaches
or effectively screen a variety of catalysts for the optimal specificity of a
target reaction through top-down approaches. As
faculty I would like to
take use of my expertise in molecular/materials catalysis and further diversify
the search for novel catalysts. In particular, I would like to utilize molecule
tools to atomically control the surface active states of materials catalysts as
well as to facilitate synthesize novel materials with defined surface
structures via bottom-up strategies. The systematically tuned surface
structures by tunable molecules could enable high specificity and selectivity
for catalysis. The catalytic reactions can involve gas-phase catalysis,
liquid-phase small molecule activation, electrocatalysis
and also photocatalysis/photoelectrochemical
catalysis. In addition to the bottom-up approaches, I would also like to
explore the dynamic combinatorial chemistry using molecular tools and nanomaterials catalysts to expedite the catalyst search.
The reversible molecular binding/dissociation cycles together with in situ
catalytic activity detection might provide feedback loops for high-throughput
screen of catalysts, mimicking the directed evolution strategy in enzyme
engineering. Therefore, in the future, I expect to combine different disciplines
for advanced catalyst search and design.

Grant Writing Experience:

I have written a total of six grant proposals
and three beamline proposals for my graduate and
postdoctoral supervisors. Successful proposals include the zinc-air battery
proposal funded by Precourt Institute of Energy (Stanford University) and
the aluminum ion battery proposal funded by US Department of Energy.

Teaching Interests:

I have extensive teaching experience
during my undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral periods.  I spent one
month in summer teaching basic science to high school/middle school students in
rural China during my undergraduate; I TAed three
undergraduate courses and one graduate course (Chem
31X-General Chemistry, Chem 174/176-Physical
Chemistry Lab A/B and Chem 277-Material Chemistry and
Physics) during my graduate in Stanford University. Since topics of catalysis,
electrochemical processes and sustainable energy are attracting more focus from
Chemistry Engineering departments, my teaching interest lies in related courses
(e.g.  Science and
Engineering of Sustainable Energy, Principles of Electrochemical Processes and Catalysis).
Lastly, I have mentored four undergraduate students and five graduate students
(including visiting graduate students)
during graduate and post-doctoral periods.

Selected Publications: ( ^#equal contribution)

Gong, M.^#; Cao, Z.^#; Liu, W.^#; Nichols,
E. M.; Smith, P. T.; Derrick, J. S.; Liu, Y. S.; Liu, J, J.; Wen, X. D.; Chang, C. J. Supramolecular
porphyrin cage assembly at molecular-materials
interfaces for electrocatalytic CO reduction, submitted

Wu, Y. P.^#; Gong, M.^#; Lin, M. C.^#; Yuan, C. Z.; Angell,
M.; Huang, L.; Wang, D. Y.; Zhang, X. D.; Yang, J.; Hwang, B. J.; Dai, H. J. 3D
Graphitic Foams Derived from Chloroaluminate Anion
Intercalation for Ultrafast Aluminum-Ion Battery, Adv. Mater., 2016,
9218-9222

Gong, M.^#; Zhou, W.^#; Kenney, M. J.^#; Capusta, R.; Cowley, S.; Wu, Y. P.; Lu, B. A.; Lin, M. C.;
Wang, D. Y.; Yang, J.; Hwang, B. J.; Dai, H. J. Blending Cr₂O₃
into NiO-Ni Electrocatalyst
for Superior Water Splitting, Angew.
Chem. Int. Ed., 2015, 127, 12157-12161

Lin, M. C.^#; Gong, M.^#; Lu, B. A.^#;
Wu, Y. P.^#; Wang, D. Y.; Guan, M. Y.; Angell, M.; Chen, C. X.; Yang,
J.; Hwang, B. J.; Dai, H. J., An
Ultrafast Rechargeable Aluminum Ion Battery, Nature, 2015, 520,
324-328

Gong, M.^#; Zhou, W.^#; Tsai, M. C.; Zhou, J. G.;
Guan, M. Y.; Lin, M. C.; Zhang B.; Hu, Y.
F.; Wang, D. Y.; Yang, J.; Pennycook, S. J.; Hwang,
B. J.; Dai, H. J. Nanoscale NiO-Ni Heterostructures for
Ultra-Active Hydrogen Evolution Electrocatalysis, Nat.
Comm., 2014, 5, 4695

Gong, M.; Li, Y. G.; Zhang, H.
B.; Zhang, B.; Zhou, W.; Feng, J.; Wang, H. L.;
Liang, Y. Y.; Fan, Z. J.; Liu, J.; Dai, H. J., Ultrafast High-Capacity NiZn Battery with NiAlCo Layered Double Hydroxide, Energy Environ. Sci.,
2014, 7, 2025-2032

Kenney, M. J.^#;
Gong, M.^#; Li, Y. G.^#;
Wu, J. Z.; Feng, J.; Lanza,
M.; Dai, H. J. High-Performance Silicon Photoanodes Passivated with Ultrathin Nickel Films for Water Oxidation,
Science,
2013, 342, 836-840

Gong, M.^#; Li, Y. G.^#; Wang, H. L.; Liang, Y. Y.;
Wu, J. Z.; Zhou, J. G.; Wang, J.; Regier,
T.; Wei F.; Dai, H. J. An Advanced Ni-Fe
Layered Double Hydroxide Electrocatalyst for Water
Oxidation, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2013, 135, 8452-8455

Reviews:

Gong, M.;
Wang, D. Y.; Chen, C. C.; Hwang, B. J.; Dai, H. J. A mini review on nickel-based electrocatalysts
for alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction
Nano Res., 2016, 9, 28-46

Gong, M.;
Dai, H.J. A mini review on NiFe-based materials as
highly active oxygen evolution reaction electrocatalysts,
Nano Res., 2015, 8,23-39

Selected Patents:

Ultra-fast rechargeable metal-ion battery, Hongjie Dai, Meng-Chang Lin, Ming Gong, Bingan
Lu, Yingpeng Wu, US20150249261, Exclusively licensed

Strongly coupled inorganic-graphene hybrid materials, apparatuses, systems and methods,
Hongjie Dai, Hailiang Wang,
Ming Gong, US9237658

Plasmonic beads for multiplexed analysis by flow
detection systems, Bo Zhang, Hongjie Dai, Yingping Zou, Ming Gong, Jiang Yang, US20160216252, Licensed

Heterostructures for ultra-active hydrogen evolution electrocatalysis, Hongjie Dai, Ming Gong, US20160017507, Exclusively licensed