Title: Single Ni sites on 3D cage-like ligand for CO₂ photocatalytic reduction

Speaker: Assoc. Prof. Yang Lan (Department of Chemical Engineering, University College London, UK)

Time: November 2, 2026 (Monday), 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM

Venue: Meeting Room 105 of the Shaw Engineering Building, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering

Organizer: School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering

Biography

 Dr. Yang Lan is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering, University College London (UCL), UK. He earned his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge in 2015, and subsequently carried out postdoctoral research at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge and the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, USA. He joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCL in June 2019, where he founded and leads his independent research group.

 His research mainly covers high-performance functional membranes, carbon capture and utilization, and catalytic conversion of carbon resources. In the field of gas separation membranes, he focuses on developing membrane materials and hollow fiber membrane modules with high selectivity, high permeability, excellent plasticization resistance and scalable fabrication, targeting CO₂/CH₄, CO₂/N₂ and CO₂/H₂ separation for applications including natural gas decarbonization, biogas upgrading, post-combustion carbon capture and hydrogen purification. In the field of carbon resource conversion, he develops emerging technologies such as photothermal catalysis to promote the conversion of CO₂ and methane into syngas, low-carbon fuels and high-value chemicals. In recent years, his group has published more than 80 research papers in top international journals including Nature Sustainability, Nature Communications, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Advanced Materials, and Advanced Functional Materials.

Abstract

 Solar-driven efficient and selective CO₂ reduction, despite its inherent challenges, shows great potential for carbon recycling and green fuel production. In this work, three-dimensional cucurbit[n]uril (CB[n]) cage-like molecules are innovatively introduced as ligands to form organometallic homogeneous molecular catalysts (CB[7]-Ni) with nickel ions for photocatalytic CO₂ reduction. Under visible light irradiation, CB[7]-Ni achieves a CO production rate of 72.1 µmol·h⁻¹ with a selectivity as high as 97.9%, outperforming most reported homogeneous and heterogeneous photocatalytic systems.

 To verify the carbon source of the products, a novel isotope tracing method is designed via a tandem reaction strategy, which effectively eliminates the interference of ¹³CO₂ fragment peaks in mass spectrometry detection without a dedicated separation system. During the reaction, the cage structure of CB[7]-Ni facilitates selective capture of CO₂ molecules, which can be converted with high selectivity by the Ni catalytic centers coordinated at the portals of CB[7]. This work provides an ingenious strategy for the design of highly active molecular cocatalysts.

Announced by School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.