Biography

Ying received her D.Phil degree in Electrochemistry from Oxford University in 2015. She continued her postdoc work on electrocatalysis and photoelectrocatalysis of CO2 conversion at the University of Toronto and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2019, she joined the Department of  Chemistry at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research group focuses on the design of electrochemical systems and electrocatalysis for CO2 conversion. She is the awardee of the National Excellent Young Scientists Fund (Hong Kong and Macau) in 2022.

Pathways Towards Carbon Neutral Chemical Industries

In the past two centuries, the development of chemical industries has revolutionized the lifestyle of human society. While the first few waves of technologies have reshaped our daily life, the remaining challenge is finding the pathways of chemical strategy for sustainability. Traditional chemical industries apply intense energies for chemical reactions and release a sizable amount of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide(CO2). Thus, carbon capture and conversion technologies are critical in achieving the goal of carbon neutrality. We use water and electricity to turn waste CO2 into chemical building blocks and liquid fuel under room temperature and atmospheric pressure. The current CO2 conversion electrolyzers suffer from severe energy loss and carbon loss due to the inefficiency of the catalyst and reactor. We designed a new catalyst and advanced electrolyzer to use electricity and carbon efficiently. Our current design can improve carbon usage by more than ten times under industrial relevant conditions than the previous system. Ethylene, the world’s most used chemical with various products from plastic to polymers, is one of the major products produced from our CO2 conversion electrolyzers. The decarbonization of the production of ethylene or other chemical building blocks can lead to the production of chemicals with low-carbon footprints.