Webinar title: Non-noble metal light absorbers for photocatalytic reduction of CO2
Speaker: Jiawei Wang
Webinar time: December 18th, 2025 (Thursday) 10:00
Venue: Room 200, New Environmental Building
Inviter: Kan Li
Abstract:
Utilizing solar energy to reduce CO2 into carbon-containing chemicals not only holds promise for mitigating the greenhouse effect but also provides a viable pathway for converting solar energy into chemical energy, thereby offering technical support for advancing the implementation of China’s “Dual Carbon” strategy. In photocatalytic CO2 reduction systems, light absorbers such as photosensitizers or semiconductors generate excited states (or charge-separated states) upon absorbing light energy, with the photogenerated electrons serving as the direct driving force for CO2 reduction. Therefore, an ideal light absorber must exhibit strong light absorption, long excited-state lifetime, strong reducing ability (to provide electrons), and high stability. Its performance is crucial in determining the overall catalytic efficiency of the system. Currently, high-performance photocatalytic CO2 reduction systems widely employ noble metal complex photosensitizers as light absorbers. However, their high cost limits prospects for large-scale applications, creating an urgent need to develop high-performance noble-metal-free light absorbers based on earth-abundant elements. Yet, existing noble-metal-free light absorbers still show significant gaps in one or several key performance metrics compared to classical noble metal photosensitizers. To address this, we focus on designing noble-metal-free light absorbers for photocatalytic CO2 reduction systems, aiming to accelerate electron transfer rates between components and gain in-depth insights into the photoinduced charge transfer mechanisms when molecular catalysts serve as catalytic sites. This work aims to advance the development of efficient CO2 conversion technologies: (1) For the first time, applying the concept of “dynamic interaction” to accelerate forward electron transfer while suppressing electron back-transfer, significantly enhancing the photocatalytic quantum yield; (2) Employing an electron donor–acceptor design strategy to create multiple series of electrically neutral, strongly reducing ligand-to-metal charge transfer excited-state photosensitizers for stable and efficient photocatalytic performance; (3) Developing methods for anchoring molecular catalysts onto noble-metal-free semiconductor surfaces to achieve rapid charge transfer at the molecule–material interface and enable efficient photocatalytic CO2 reduction.
About the speaker:
Wang Jiawei is an Associate Professor at the School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University. His research focuses on the application of molecular catalysis in the resource utilization of greenhouse/pollutant gases. He has published over 70 SCI papers in internationally renowned journals, including J. Am. Chem. Soc., Nat. Commun., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., and Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. Among these, more than 40 are first-author or corresponding-author publications. His work has been cited over 5,000 times, with an H-index of 35 (Google Scholar). He has been selected for multiple talent programs, including the Ministry of Education's Overseas Talent Recruitment Program and the Guangdong Provincial Outstanding Youth Fund. Additionally, he serves as an editorial board member for Scientific Reports and a youth editorial board member for several journals.