CBE Seminar: Yao Yang (Cornell Chemistry)

Description

Operando Electrochemical Methods at Dynamic Energy Materials Interfaces

Energy Materials lie at the interface between electrochemistry and electrochemical engineering and represent one of the most promising approaches for enabling renewable energy technologies to mitigate carbon emissions through the use of hydrogen fuel cells and the electrochemical reduction of CO2. One of the key challenges is understanding how to achieve and sustain electrocatalytic activity under operating conditions for extended time periods, and such fundamental understanding calls for the use of multimodal operando analytical methods.

In this talk, I will first present my recent work on operando studies for identifying the complex nature of active Cu sites for electrochemical CO2 reduction to liquid fuels. I will focus on the development of multimodal operando methods to elucidate operando (operating) structure-property relationships of energy materials with an emphasis on electrochemical liquid-cell STEM (EC-STEM) at CCMR and correlative synchrotron X-ray based methods at CHESS. I will then present the latest development of operando heating/cooling EC-STEM to investigate catalyst and battery operation under realistic climates. Operando electrochemical 4D-STEM in liquid, driven by machine learning, has shown great potential to interrogate complex structures of energy materials at solid-liquid interfaces.
 

Bio:
Yao Yang is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University. As a Cornellian, he was co-advised by Profs. Héctor Abruña in electrochemistry and David Muller in electron microscopy and worked extensively with Prof. Francis DiSalvo on solid-state materials. As a Miller fellow at UC Berkeley, he worked with Prof. Peidong Yang on developing operando STEM for investigating the dynamic evolution of nanocatalysts for CO2 conversion to liquid fuels.

Yao was recognized by the Wentink Award (Highest Graduate Award of Cornell Chemistry, 2020) and ACS AC/DC Rising Stars in Analytical Chemistry (2022). He was recently awarded the Best Early Career Presentation at the MRS Spring 2023 and Journal of Materials Research (JMR) Distinguished Invited Speaker at the MRS Spring 2024. He serves as the co-chair for ACS Symposium on Advances in Electrochemistry and the leading organizer for MRS 2025 Fall Symposium on operando characterizations of energy materials. He was the keynote speaker for the Canadian Center for Electron Microscopy (CCEM) in situ EM Workshop in 2024 and served as the GRS co-chair for Gordon Liquid-Phase TEM conference in 2024.