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
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