Huiyuan Zhu
Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering (by courtesy)
Associate Professor of Chemistry
About
The Zhu Group's research aims to develop new synthetic strategies for well-defined nanocrystals and 2-dimensional (2D) materials with atomically precise surfaces and interfaces that can lead to a fundamental understanding of how atomic structure affects catalyst performance and to use this new knowledge to design optimized catalysts for critical energy conversion and chemical transformation processes. Research will focus specifically on:
- Electrochemical CO2 conversion
- Sustainable nitrogen cycling
- Heterogeneous thermocatalytic reactions (e.g., acetylene semi-hydrogenation).
Three questions fundamental to catalysis are to be addressed:
- What are the catalytic active sites and how do they evolve under reaction conditions?
- How to steer the reaction pathway toward desirable products via modulating active sites and their environments?
- How to circumvent or ultimately, go beyond adsorption-energy scaling relations?
Education
B.Sc. in Chemistry University of Science and Technology of China, 2009
Ph.D. in Chemistry Brown University, 2014