Topic: Design of Carbon Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage
To effectively utilize renewable energy, energy conversion and storage devices such as fuel cells and supercapacitors (SCs) have attracted tremendous attention in recent years. Fuel cells has demonstrated as the upcoming alternative energy source due to its highest energy density among energy conversion and storage devices, while SCs has shown to be a promising energy storage device owing to the merits of high power density (>10 kW kg-1), long cycle life (>10 years), fast charging/discharging (within seconds), high reliability, and low maintenance cost. Fuel cell and SCs have been used in advanced applications, such as portable electronic devices, hybrid electric vehicles, integration with fuel cell and battery, and emergency doors on the Airbus A380. However, despite significant advances in electrode materials, practical applications of fuel cells are hindered by using expensive noble metals such as platinum (Pt), palladium (Pd), ruthenium (Ru) as electrocatalyst. For SCs, the current challenge is the low specific capacitance of carbon-based materials. More research is needed to improve the electrochemical performance of electrode materials in order to support the development of next generation of energy conversion and storage devices.
In this talk, the speaker presents his recent work in the development and applications of carbon/graphene materials for fuel cells and SCs. First, he describes how to use the three-dimensional architectures of graphene aerogel to enhance the oxygen reduction reaction in fuel cells. Second, he proposes effective methods of fabricating hierarchical porous carbon/graphene aerogel materials with surface functional group modification to achieve high specific capacitance.

Introduction of Lecturer