主讲人：赵川  教授  澳大利亚工程院院士

活动时间：2026年4月20日，9:00

地点：理科群7号楼C118室

讲座内容：

Hydrogen holds the promise as green energy carriers for global scale storage of renewable energy, e.g., solar and wind, enabling the continuous usage of these diffusive and intermittent energy sources when used together with fuel cells.  Water electrolyser and fuel cells are cornerstone technologies for the hydrogen economy, which requests highly efficient, low cost, and robust catalyst materials to reduce its current levels of energy consumption and cost. However, currently there is a gap between lab-scale research and industrial scale application, effectuated by catalysts, cell design, and operation conditions.

This talk highlights the current challenges and opportunities for water electrolysis and fuel cells, from materials and device engineering perspectives. I will showcase our efforts in developing Earth-abundant electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reactions (OER), hydrogen evolution reactions (HER) and oxygen reduction reactions (ORR), as well as operando methodologies for understanding the catalytic processes and degradations in membrane electrode assembly. The commercialisation of some our work for water electrolyser industry also will be introduced to highlight the significance of material design from atomic to macroscopic to industrial scale.

主讲人介绍：

Prof Chuan Zhao is a Professor and Australian Laureate Fellow at the School of Chemistry at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and Fellow of Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering (FTSE). He is currently the Deputy Director of the ARC Training Centre for the Global Hydrogen Economy, the Flagship Program Director and Sydney Node Director in the ARC Centre of Excellence on Green Electrochemical Transformation of Carbon Dioxide. Prof Zhao received his PhD with an excellence award from Northwest University, then completed postdoctoral research at University of Oldenburg and Monash University, before starting his independent career in UNSW in 2010. Prof Zhao is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher and has published over 400 papers. He is interested in discovering novel electrochemical methods and materials for applications in water splitting, hydrogen fuel cells, CO2 reduction, aqueous batteries, and sensors. Prof Zhao is a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), Fellow of Royal Australian Chemical Institute (FRACI) and Fellow of Royal Society of New South Wales (FRSN). He has received numerous awards including the most distinguished Australian Awards in Chemistry and Electrochemistry, RACI HG Smith Memorial Award and R.H. Stokes Medal, respectively, as well as the Liversidge Awards and Lectureship from the Royal Society of New South Wales.