Dr Xunyu (Rain) Lu

Biography
Phone
+61 2 93859793

Professional Experience

  •   Senior Lecturer, UNSW Sydney (01 July 2019 - now).
  •   Scientia Fellow, UNSW Sydney (01 Jan 2019 - now)
  •   Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, UNSW Sydney (01 Jan 2017 - now)
  •   Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UNSW Sydney (01 Jan 2015 - 31 Dec 2016)

Teaching

  • CEIC2009 Materials and Energy Balances in the Chemical Process Industry.
  • CEIC2000 Materials and Energy Systems.
Research activities

Research Activities and Current Projects 

  • 1. Development of cost-effective and active catalyst for electrochemical energy conversion reactions. 
  • 2. Fundamental study of electrocatalysis with combined computational and experimental techniques. 
  • 3. Design and fabrication of energy devices (water/CO2 electrolysers, fuel cell stacks, metal-air batteries) for potential industrial applications.
  • 4. Control the geometric and electronic effects of single atom catalysts for selectivity and activity enhancements. 
  • 5. Integration of the energy devices with state-of-the-art photovoltaic (PV) cells to produce renewable chemicals and fuels.

Recent Selected Publications:

  • Y. Zhao, P.V. Kumar, X. Tan, X.X. Lu, X. Zhu, J. Jiang, J. Pan, S. Xi, H. Y. Yang, Z. Ma, T. Wan, D. Chu, W. Jiang, S.C. Smith, R. Amal, Z. Han, X. Lu, Modulating Pt-O-Pt atomic clusters with isolated cobalt atoms for enhanced hydrogen evolution catalysis, Nature Communications, 2022, 13, 2430.
  • Z. Lin, Q. Zhang, J. Pan, C. Tsounis, A.A. Esmailpour, S. Xi, Y.H. Yang, Z. Han, J. Yun, R. Amal, X. Lu, Atomic Co decorated free-standing graphene electrode assembly for efficient hydrogen peroxide production in acid, Energy & Environmental Science, 2022, 15, 1172-1182. 
  • Q. Zhang, P. Kumar, X. Zhu, R. Daiyan, N.M. Bedford, K. Wu, Z. Han, T. Zhang, R. Amal, X. Lu, Electronically Modified Atomic Sites Within a Multicomponent Co/Cu Composite for Efficient Oxygen Electroreduction, Advanced Energy Materials, 2021, 11, 2100303. 
  • Y. Zhao, W.-J. Jiang, J. Zhang, E.C. Lovell, R. Amal, Z. Han, X. Lu, Anchoring Sites Engineering in Single-Atom Catalysts for Highly Efficient Electrochemical Energy Conversion Reactions, Advanced Materials, 2021, 33, 2102801.
  • X. Zhu, X. Tan, K.-H. Wu, S.-C. Haw, C.-W. Pao, B.-J. Su, J. Jiang, S.C. Smith, J.-M. Chen, R. Amal, X. Lu, Intrinsic ORR Activity Enhancement of Pt Atomic Sites by Engineering the d-Band Center via Local Coordination Tuning, Angewandte Chemie-International Edition, 2021, 60, 21911-21917.
  • Q. Zhang, X. Tan, N.M. Bedford, Z. Han, L. Thomsen, S. Smith, R. Amal, X. Lu, Direct insights into the role of epoxy groups on cobalt sites for acidic H2O2 production, Nature Communications, 2020, 11, 4181. 
  • X. Zhu, C. Hu, R. Amal, L. Dai, X. Lu, Heteroatom-doped carbon catalysts for zinc-air batteries: progress, mechanism, and opportunities, Energy & Environmental Science, 2020, 13, 4536-4563.

Ph.D. positions and Honours projects are available, please contact Dr. Lu for further discussions. 

Selected Publications

Journal articles

Daiyan R; Chen R; Kumar P; Bedford NM; Qu J; Cairney JM; Lu X; Amal R, 2020, 'Tunable Syngas Production through CO2 Electroreduction on Cobalt-Carbon Composite Electrocatalyst', ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, vol. 12, pp. 9307 - 9315, http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsami.9b21216

Daiyan R; Saputera WH; Masood H; Leverett J; Lu X; Amal R, 2020, 'A Disquisition on the Active Sites of Heterogeneous Catalysts for Electrochemical Reduction of CO2 to Value-Added Chemicals and Fuel', Advanced Energy Materials, vol. 10, pp. 1902106 - 1902106, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aenm.201902106

Daiyan R; Lovell EC; Bedford NM; Saputera WH; Wu KH; Lim S; Horlyck J; Ng YH; Lu X; Amal R, 2019, 'Modulating Activity through Defect Engineering of Tin Oxides for Electrochemical CO2 Reduction', Advanced Science, vol. 6, pp. 1900678 - 1900678, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/advs.201900678

Daiyan R; Lu X; Tan X; Zhu X; Chen R; Smith SC; Amal R, 2019, 'Antipoisoning nickel-carbon electrocatalyst for practical electrochemical co2 reduction to CO', ACS Applied Energy Materials, vol. 2, pp. 8002 - 8009, http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsaem.9b01470

Zhang Q; Bedford NM; Pan J; Lu X; Amal R, 2019, 'A Fully Reversible Water Electrolyzer Cell Made Up from FeCoNi (Oxy)hydroxide Atomic Layers', Advanced Energy Materials, vol. 9, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aenm.201901312