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Liqun Kang is a PhD student in Materials and Catalysis Laboratory (MCL) led by Lecturer Ryan Wang in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCL. His current research focuses on heterogeneous catalysis and operando spectroscopy based on nanomaterials and porous materials. Prior to this, Liqun Kang got his Bachelor degree in Peking University in 2016, and during his undergraduate study he participated in two research programs as a research assistant in Rare Earth Separation and Inorganic Materials Group (belongs to State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Material Chemistry and Application) supervised by Professor Chunhua Yan. He studied the heterogeneous catalysis by ruthenium nanomaterials for chalcogen - chalcogen bond activation and cross dehydrogenative coupling reaction.
Research project
Title: Water Gas Shift (WGS) reaction catalysed by single-atom catalysts
Supported metal and metal oxide catalysts play significant roles in heterogeneous catalysis, with widely studies showed their advantages and potentials as catalysts for both lab-scale and industry-scale reactions. On the one hand, it is generally considered that heterogeneous catalytic performance mainly depends on the contact between reagents and catalysts, in which aspect the high specific surface area of catalysts is required. On the other hand, smaller particle size for metal or metal oxide materials result in more low-coordinated metal atoms, which play the key role as activate centre for their strong interactions to the reactant. Consequently, the size metal or metal oxide particles have become a cause for calling for the evolution of heterogeneous catalyst.
The destination of reduced particle size is single-atom catalysts, which means single metal atom loading on support materials, owing the largest atom utilization and highest specific surface area. Moreover, single-atom catalysts theoretically overcome the shortage of traditional catalysts, that relatively lower activity and selectivity result from inhomogeneity of component distribution and varieties of reaction behaviours. And the subtle changes in physical and chemical properties of catalysts during the reaction, leading to multiple factors for catalytic mechanism study, such as crystal phase change and valence state change, would not have to be taken into consideration for single-atom catalysts.
Here, a method for synthesis of single-atom catalysts has been developed in our group, including a hydrothermal hot injection process for synthesis of metal oxide supports with low oxidation state and a kinetic controlled reduction deposition process for single-atom loading. Thanks to the low concentration and strong reductive ability of supports materials, quick single-atom deposition is more favourable with both kinetically slower nucleation and crystal growth inhibited. In comparison with other synthesis methods for single-atom catalysts that depend on additional added reductant, our catalysts take the full advantage of the original reducing properties from supports materials with low-oxidation state and directly prevent separate nucleation in solution and decrease the possibility of Inhomogeneous growth. These single-atom catalysts we synthesized are expected to show high performance on Water Gas Shift (WGS) reaction.
Education
BSc in Chemistry, Peking University, China 2016
