Prof. Chenghua Sun obtained his B.S. degree at Central South University in China in 2000, and completed his Ph.D. with Prof. Hui-Ming Cheng at Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He joined Prof. Max Lu’s research centre at the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia) in 2007. Then he joined Monash University as Lecturer in 2013 and had been awarded ARC Future Fellow in 2014. In 2018, Dr Sun joined Swinburne University of Technology as a tenured Associate Professor. Dr Sun has been mainly working on computer-aided catalyst design for clean energy and environment, leading to 260 journal publications and 18,000 citations so far.

In this talk, Prof. Sun will introduce current research of ammonia synthesis at room temperature, including electrocatalysis and photo-electrocatalysis approaches. The starting nitrogen resource could be NO_x or N₂, aiming to produce ammonia with electricity or solar energy as the driving force. Key challenges have been summarized, together with his work on catalyst design and development, such as p-block catalysts, single-atom catalysts and quantum dots as well. Finally, electrocatalysis cell combining ammonia synthesis and fuel cells have been demonstrated from his work.

Prof. Xuping Sun received his PhD degree in Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry (CIAC), Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2006. During 2006–2009, he carried out postdoctoral researches at Konstanz University, University of Toronto, and Purdue University. In 2010, he started his independent research career as a full Professor at CIAC and then moved to Sichuan University in 2015. In 2018, he joined University of Electronic Science and Technology of China where he found the Research Center of Nanocatalysis & Sensing. He was recognized as a highly cited researcher (2018-2020) in both areas of chemistry and materials science by Clarivate Analytics. He published over 590 papers with total citations over 54000 and an h-index of 124. His research mainly focuses on rational design of functional nanostructures toward applications in electrochemistry for energy conversion and storage, sensing, and environment.

教授、博士生导师，青年长江学者，现任四川大学化学工程学院副院长。入选天府万人科技菁英计划，四川大学“百人A计划”。荣获四川省科技进步一等奖(第一完成人)，全国发明创新人物奖，中国化工学会侯德榜青年科技奖，全国产学研合作创新奖，全国发明协会创新创业二等奖，四川省有色金属青年科技奖等多项科研奖励。“全国黄大年式教师团队”骨干成员，广东省韶关市创新团队带头人。 

主要研究领域为新能源材料与器件设计、储能材料生产工艺与关键装备的开发及优化、废旧电池材料回收及资源化利用。主持国家自然科学基金重点项目、面上项目和青年项目、四川省科技厅重大项目/重点研发/科技支撑计划等纵向课题，负责企业横向项目十余项，总经费3000余万元。建成万吨级电池正极材料生产装置多套，获得“国际领先”等成果评价2项，获得授权专利15件。在Adv. Mater., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Energy Environ. Sci., Energy Storage Mater., Adv. Funct. Mater.等知名刊物发表SCI论文100余篇，引用超过6000次。 

报告简介：介绍钠离子电池发展现状及产业化前景。着重介绍钠离子电池正极材料研究进展，对比分析了氧化物、普鲁士蓝、聚阴离子三种正极材料的优、劣势及改性方法。以课题组在聚阴离子和氧化物系列钠离子电池正极材料的工作为例，列举了钠离子电池正极材料的改性方法及效果。