Title: Crystal Shape Engineering of Titanium Oxides
Speaker: Prof. Huagui Yang
Date: 19th January，2018
Time: 10:00 a.m
Venue：Room 326，Building Chao Kuang Piu ，School of Materials Science & Engineering
Inviter: Prof. Zhaohui Ren
Education and Work:
Prof. , School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China, 2008
Postdoc, University of Queensland, AUS, 2007
PhD, National University of Singapore, 2005
Inorganic single crystals with special surface structures have many promising applications. Unfortunately, surfaces with high reactivity usually diminish rapidly during the crystal growth process as a result of the minimization of surface energy. Therefore, increasing the percentage of the desirable highly reactive surfaces or creating new favorable surface still remains a challenge. In 2008, he successfully synthesized anatase TiO2 single crystals with a large percentage of reactive {001} facets by using hydrofluoric acid (HF) as a capping agent. In this work, he investigated the adsorption effect of 12 non-metallic atoms X (where X can represent H, B, C, N, O, F, Si, P, S, Cl, Br or I) based on first-principle calculations. Furthermore, ultra-thin anatase TiO2 nanosheets with dominant {001} facets (~ 82%) and controllable thickness (1.6-2.7 nm) were synthesized by using a modified one-pot hydrothermal route. The TiO2 nanosheets exhibited a high H2 evolution rate under UV-vis light irradiation, attributing to their exposed reactive {001} facets and high crystallinity. Interestingly, using a gas-phase oxidation process and titanium (IV) chloride (TiCl4) as a precursor, for the first time, he successfully prepared anatase TiO2 single crystals dominated with high-index {105} facets. Their research suggested that the {105} facets have the capability to cleavage water through photocatalytic process and this activity is higher than that of {101} facets while lower than {001} facets.
To date, he has published more than 150 refereed papers on internationally renowned journals (e.g. Nature, Nature Energy, Nat. Commun., J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., etc.).
