Bo-Qing Xu

Changjiang Scholar Professor and Director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry
Tsinghua University
Friday, June 21, 2019

Topic: Materials Approaches for Improving the Utilization Efficiency of Precious Metals in Heterogeneous Catalysts and Their Structure -Performance Correlations

Precious metal elements constitute an important class of active components in many existing and emerging solid (heterogeneous) catalysts. Irreducible high surface area supporting materials are usually required in this class of catalysts to disperse and stabilize the precious metal entities for improving their utilization efficiency and mass activity for catalytic reactions. These precious metal containing catalysts are widely used in energy conversion, chemical and petrochemical industries, pharmaceutical synthesis, waste abatement and environmental protection. This presentation intends to highlight the approaches practiced in our laboratory for improving the utilization efficiency of precious metals in heterogeneous thermal and electro catalysts, including 1) precious metal elements dispersed as isolated surface atoms (cations) on supporting materials, 2) precious metal-on-another metal (like Pt-on-Au or Pt-on-Ag) nanostructures, and 3) core-shell nanostructures with the more precious metal enriched to the outmost layers. Thermal catalytic selective-hydrogenation, electro catalytic formic acid oxidation and oxygen reduction reactions will be exemplified to show the structure-performance correlations in some representative catalysts.

Biography

Bo-Qing Xu is a Changjiang Scholar Professor of Chemistry and serves as the Director at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of Tsinghua University. He completed his doctorate in physical chemistry of heterogeneous catalysis at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP, Chinese Academy of Sciences) in 1988, as a jointly educated Ph.D. of DICP and Hokkaido University of Japan. He then worked as a research associate at DICP. In December 1991, he joined the faculty of the School of Chemical Engineering at Dalian University of Technology (DUT) and became a full Professor in late 1992. From March 1995 to April 1998, he worked as a visiting scientist fellow at the Catalysis Center in Northwestern University (USA) and at the School of Chemical Engineering in Georgia Institute of Technology. He joined Tsinghua University in May 1998 and had been as a short-term visiting professor at UC Berkeley (2002) and Hong Kong Baptist University (2003).

He has served as the vice-president of the Chinese Catalysis Society in 2012-2017, associated editor of ACS Catalysis since 2014, editorial advisory member of Current Catalysis (2011-), Chinese Journal of Catalysis (2001-), Chinese Journal of Fuel Chemistry (2009-) and Chinese Journal of Environmental Science & Technology (2008-). He was an editorial advisory member of Applied Catalysis A-General (2005-2008) and a gust editor of Topics in Catalysis (2003). He was also an International Advisory Board member of the international Acid-Base Catalysis Group (2001-2013). His main research interest is on the physical chemistry aspects of Heterogeneous Catalysis and Nanostructure Materials for sustainable energy and environments. He has authored/coauthored more than 240 publications with an H-index of 55, and owns 21 patents. He delivered 80+ invited presentations in academic conferences and research institutions.

Bo-Qing Xu’s scientific research has won a number of awards in China, including Natural Science Award of the Ministry of Education of China (2009), National Catalysis Award of the Chinese Catalysis Society (2006), Scientific Advancement Award from the Association of Chinese Chemical and Petrochemical Industries (2006), Outstanding Young Chemist Award (NSF China, 2001).