GETCO2 Update

In this newsletter:

Director’s Update
A successful Centre-wide Retreat
Meet our early-career researchers: Ruirui Liu and Tanika Duivenvoorden
Highly Cited Researchers
Data and consent
Upcoming events
Publications

Director's Update

As we approach the end of 2024, I am proud to look back on GETCO2’s fantastic first year and the many achievements across the Centre. A highlight was our official launch in July 2024 at the University of Queensland, overseen by the Assistant Minister for Education and the CEO of the Australian Research Council.

I am pleased we have over 18 collaborative research projects underway, with our Chief Investigators recruiting more than 30 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, through a highly competitive process. We have attracted some of the most talented young researchers in the field, from around the world. It was a great pleasure to meet our young researchers face-to-face at our inaugural Centre Retreat, held just a few weeks ago in Yarra Valley.

We kicked off our Capacity Building Program this year with this cohort converging on the University of Sydney to participate in our electrochemical CO2 reduction training workshop. Since then, a working group of our early-mid career researchers (EMCRs) have been developing a plan for establishing our EMCR Committee, which will give EMCRs a voice across all aspects of the Centre.

As a multi-institutional and interdisciplinary Centre, I am delighted to see our efforts to work together reflected in more than 50 publications and over 30 inter-nodal visits across our seven Australian universities. To date, we have held 7 Centre-wide workshops, sharing knowledge and initiating new collaborations. Locally, we partnered with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Biotechnology in a successful bid to establish the Queensland Quantum Decarbonisation Alliance, and internationally, UQ is supporting us to establish collaborations with researchers at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Across the Centre, we have hosted visiting researchers from China, Japan, Taiwan, India, Brazil, Canada and USA!

Interest from industry has been significant in our first year. We held our first Industry Workshop with 60 participants, and we have engaged with around 30 companies and organisations in Australia and overseas seeking decarbonisation solutions. While we are in the early stages of our research, we are dedicated to building and maintaining dialogues with all stakeholders.

The new year promises to be busy and exciting, guided by our strategic plan and support from all our Centre members and partners. As outcomes from our Retreat, we have committed to establishing a number of initiatives such as ‘She Can’ to foster women’s career paths in the Centre, host a decarbonisation Hackathon, and hold Master classes for our EMCRs in the fundamentals of electrochemistry. I am confident we will reach the Centre’s milestones for 2025 and beyond.

Thank you for your contributions to date. We need everyone on board to play their part, from research innovations to large-scale manufacturing, to support the net-zero transition. I wish you all the best for a peaceful and festive holiday season, and I look forward to working together in 2025.

Professor Xiwang Zhang
Centre Director

GETCO2 2023-2024 Highlights

Click here to see the image in full-scale.

A successful retreat

At our retreat in late October, we brought together 77 Centre members comprising researchers and students from our seven nodes, advisory committee members, associate investigators, and industry partners for the first time. The retreat laid a fantastic foundation for our collaborative efforts towards achieving our goals for 2025 and beyond.

Our post-event survey shows 97 % of participants rated the overall retreat experience as Excellent.

The initial teambuilding session, the sessions about professional development and intellectual property, and the EMCR get-together meeting were especially highlighted.

We sincerely thank everyone for their generous and valuable contributions – the ideas, discussion and advice documented at the Retreat will inform our strategy and activities for the coming year and beyond!

Student Spotlight

We welcome our new intake of outstanding PhD students from around the world.
Meet two of them here!

Ruirui Liu:
Transforming CO2 Reduction with Single-Atom Catalysts

Ruirui Liu is a PhD candidate from UNSW under the supervision of Prof. Chuan Zhao. She is designing a single-atom catalyst to address the mass transfer limitations in CO₂ reduction reactions. Ruirui’s work has already shown promising results, and moving forward, she aims to scale up and translate her research into industrial applications.

What are you working on at the moment?

- Currently, I’m working on designing a hierarchically porous single-atom Nickel (Ni) catalyst with nanoconfined ionic liquids for enhanced mass transfer in CO₂ electroreduction. Although there has been progress in the design of single-atom catalysts, the simple single-atom structure limits the number of available active sites. Given that CO₂ reduction is a complex three-phase reaction, the restricted number of active sites further challenges effective mass transfer across the three phases. Therefore, we are looking at combining porous engineering with surface modification as an effective strategy.

- This approach improves the accessibility of active sites and enables more active sites to participate in the reaction. It also enhances the CO₂ diffusion and ions transport during the process, which increases the electrochemical performance even further.

Read the full interview with Ruirui here >>

Tanika Duivenvoorden:
My journey from studying chemistry to developing cutting-edge, sustainable technology

Ever wondered how you could make use of your university education to create a positive change in the world? Tanika Duivenvoorden, a PhD student at the University of Queensland (UQ), is doing exactly that through her research in sustainable energy.

Having started out as an undergraduate chemistry student with a passion for the planet, she’s now part of a world-changing team at the GETCO2 project, which focuses on transforming carbon dioxide into sustainable energy sources.

From being a chemistry undergraduate to contributing to impactful research, Tanika’s journey shows how science and sustainability can come together to create an exciting, impactful and a rewarding career.

In this article, Tanika shares what it’s like to actively contribute to the development of cutting-edge green technology at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Green Electrochemical Transformation of Carbon Dioxide - spoiler alert: it’s not all lab coats and test tubes! - and offers practical advice for students who want to step into the world of sustainable tech and make a difference.

This article was published on November 20, 2024 by QS Top Universities, Keshala Jayawickrama

Read the full article on QS Top University's website >>

Congratulations to our Centre Director Xiwang Zhang and Chief Investigators Zaiping Guo, Chuan Zhao and Fengwang Li for being named on the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers 2024!

The four GETCO2 researchers have authored multiple Highly Cited Papers which rank in the top 1% by citations for their field and publication year.

Privacy, data and consent

Why?
The ARC requires all Centres of Excellence to report information about Centre members and activities such as research, publications, awards and prizes, presentations, new funding, IP, and mentoring. As the administering node for GETCO2, UQ manages all personal information in accordance with the Information Privacy Act 2009, the UQ Privacy Management Policy and the  UQ Information Management Policy.

Where?
We store your data confidentially in our Records Management System, 'the GETCO2 Hub' in Zoho Creator, a cloud-based platform hosted in Australia. Access to the GETCO2 Hub is restricted to the Centre's Operations Team. For more information please seethe Zoho privacy policy

As a centre member of GETCO2 your name, member type, university or partner organisation, image, and researcher profile link or LinkedIn profile will be added to the GETCO2 website under "Our People".

If you do not consent to your information or image being used in either the GETCO2 Hub or GETCO2 website, please let us know by emailing getco2@uq.edu.au.

Upcoming events

5 December 2025: UQ Node Spotlight, UQ St. Lucia Campus, Brisbane
27-28 May 2028: inSTEM Conference at RMIT. Learn more and register here: www.instem.org.au inSTEM is a two-day conference for networking and career advancement designed for marginalised and underrepresented groups in STEM, along with their allies and mentors. inSTEM is an initiative of 8 ARC Centres of Excellence, including GETCO2.
We will send more info in early 2025 about funding support to attend inSTEM, in the meantime please contact GETCO2 (getco2@uq.edu.au) if you are interested.

Recent publications

CENTRE PUBLICATIONS

For more publications, including 2023, see getco2.org.

Sahu, AK; Yadav, S; Banerjee, D; Rufford, TE; Upadhyayula, S (2024) Accelerating Charge Separation and CO2 Photoreduction in Aqueous Phase under Visible Light with Ru Nanoparticles Loaded on Ga-Doped NiTiO3 in a Batch Photoreactor ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 10.1021/acsami.3c15915
Paul, R; Maibam, A; Chatterjee, R; Wang, WJ; Mukherjee, T; Das, N; Yellappa, M; Banerjee, T; Bhaumik, A; Mohan, SV; Babarao, R; Mondal, J (2024) Purification of Waste-Generated Biogas Mixtures Using Covalent Organic Framework's High CO2 Selectivity ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 10.1021/acsami.4c03245
Wu, Idros, Feng, Huang, Burdyny, Wang, Wang, Li, Rufford (2024) Flooding Control by Electrochemically Reduced Graphene Oxide Additives in Silver Catalyst Layers for CO2 Electrolysis ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
Gong, YT; Xu, X; Aquib, M; Zhang, YH; Yang, WT; Chang, YX; Peng, H; Boyer, C; Whittaker, AK; Fu, CK (2024) Ammonium, Phosphonium, and Sulfonium Polymers for Antimicrobial Applications: A Comparative Study ACS Applied Polymer Materials 10.1021/acsapm.4c00461
Yu, HM; Han, XX; Hua, ZY; Yang, WQ; Wu, XP; Wu, YZ; Chen, SX; Hong, W; Deng, SG; Zhang, J; Wang, J (2024) Modulating Electronic Properties of Carbon for Selective Electrochemical Reduction of CO2 to Methanol on Cu3P@C ACS Catalysis 10.1021/acscatal.4c02465
Jinshuo Zou, Gemeng Liang, Jodie A. Yuwono, Fangli Zhang, Shilin Zhang, Bernt Johannessen, Liang Sun, Zaiping Guo (2024) Size-Dependent Effects of Ru Nanoparticles on Li-CO2 Batteries ACS Energy Letters https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.4c01567
Ding, SS; Steele, JA; Chen, P; Lin, TE; He, DX; Zhang, CX; Fan, XQ; Solano, E; Whittaker, AK; Hao, MM; Wang, LZ (2023) Ligand-Mediated Homojunction Structure for High-Efficiency FAPbI3 Quantum Dot Solar Cells Advanced Energy Materials 10.1002/aenm.202301817
Wu, SC; Guo, HC; Zhao, C (2024) Challenges and Opportunities for Proton Batteries: From Electrodes, Electrolytes to Full-Cell Applications Advanced Functional Materials 10.1002/adfm.202405401
Sun, Q; Tan, X; Jia, C; Rong, CL; Wang, SH; Han, C; Xiao, Y; Qi, HQ; Smith, SC; Zhao, C (2024) Molecule Doping of Atomically Dispersed Cu-Au Alloy for Enhancing Electroreduction of CO to C2+ Products Advanced Functional Materials 10.1002/adfm.202406281
Gupta, D; Mao, JF; Guo, ZP (2024) Bifunctional Catalysts for CO2 Reduction and O2 Evolution: A Pivotal for Aqueous Rechargeable Zn-CO2 Batteries Advanced Materials 10.1002/adma.202407099
Jia, C; Sun, Q; Liu, RR; Mao, GZ; Maschmeyer, T; Gooding, JJ; Zhang, T; Dai, LM; Zhao, C (2024) Challenges and Opportunities for Single-Atom Electrocatalysts: From Lab-Scale Research to Potential Industry-Level Applications Advanced Materials 10.1002/adma.202404659
Wang, Y; Arandiyan, H; Mofarah, SS; Shen, XJ; Bartlett, SA; Koshy, P; Sorrell, CC; Sun, HY; Pozo-Gonzalo, C; Dastafkan, K; Britto, S; Bhargava, SK; Zhao, C (2024) Stacking Fault-Enriched MoNi4/MoO2 Enables High-Performance Hydrogen Evolution Advanced Materials 10.1002/adma.202402156
Wu, HW; Yu, HM; Chow, YL; Webley, PA; Zhang, J (2024) Toward Durable CO2 Electroreduction with Cu-Based Catalysts via Understanding Their Deactivation Modes Advanced Materials 10.1002/adma.202403217
Rabiee, H; Li, MR; Yan, PH; Wu, YM; Zhang, XQ; Dorosti, F; Zhang, X; Ma, BB; Hu, SH; Wang, H; Zhu, ZH; Ge, L (2024) Rational Designing Microenvironment of Gas-Diffusion Electrodes via Microgel-Augmented CO2 Availability for High-Rate and Selective CO2 Electroreduction to Ethylene Advanced Science 10.1002/advs.202402964
De Ao, Zibo Yang, Aibing Chen, Yuxiu Sun, Mao Ye, Lei Tian, Xixi Cen, Zixi Xie, Juan Du, Zhihua Qiao, Anthony K. Cheetham, Jingwei Hou, Chongli Zhong (2024) Effective C4 Separation by Zeolite Metal–Organic Framework Composite Membranes Angew Chemie Int Ed https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202401118
Yang, JD; Yin, HQ; Du, AJ; Tebyetekerwa, M; Bie, CB; Wang, ZY; Sun, ZM; Zhang, ZG; Zeng, XK; Zhang, XW (2025) Unveiling O2 adsorption on non-metallic active site for selective photocatalytic H2O2 production Applied Catalysis B-Environment And Energy 10.1016/j.apcatb.2024.124586
Ding, XD; Ji, Y; Huang, HS; Huang, JL; Chen, SQ; Yang, C; Li, FW; Luo, MC (2024) Electrocatalysis of the ammonia oxidation reaction Chem Catalysis 10.1016/j.checat.2024.100932
Sahu, AK; Pokhriyal, M; Banerjee, D; Rufford, TE; Upadhyayula, S (2024) An indirect Z-scheme heterostructure of nano-gold layer immobilized Cu-Al-doped SrTiO 3 and CoO x-WO 3 for photocatalytic CO 2 reduction Chemical Engineering Journal 10.1016/j.cej.2024.150716
Chen, GL; Ge, L; Kuang, YZ; Rabiee, H; Ma, BB; Dorosti, F; Nanjundan, AK; Zhu, ZH; Wang, H (2024) Hollow fiber gas-diffusion electrodes with tailored crystal facets for tuning syngas production in electrochemical CO2 reduction Chemical Engineering Journal 10.1016/j.cej.2024.151651
Yizhu Kuang, Guoliang Chen, Dimuthu Herath Mudiyanselage, Hesamoddin Rabiee, Beibei Ma, Fatereh Dorosti, Ashok Kumar Nanjundan, Zhonghua Zhu, Hao Wang and Lei Ge (2024) Engineering interfacial molecular interactions on Ag Hollow fibre gas diffusion electrodes for high efficiency in CO2 conversion to CO Chemistry - A European Journal https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.202403251
Du, K; Siauw, M; Valade, D; Jasieniak, M; Voelcker, NH; Trefonas, P III; Thackeray, JW; Peng, H; Blakey, I; Whittaker, AK (2024) Control of Presentation of Functional Ultraviolet Absorbers to the Surface of Photoresist Polymers Using Low Surface Energy Polymers Chemistry Of Materials 10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00791
Rabiee, Hesamoddin; Yan, Penghui; Wang, Hao; Zhu, Zhonghua; Ge, Lei (2024) Electrochemical CO2 reduction integrated with membrane/adsorption‐based CO2 capture in gas‐diffusion electrodes and electrolytes Ecoenergy https://doi.org/10.1002/ece2.23
Rong, CL; Wang, SH; Shen, X; Jia, C; Sun, Q; Zhang, Q; Zhao, C (2024) Defect-balanced active and stable Co3O4-x for proton exchange membrane water electrolysis at ampere-level current density Energy & Environmental Science 10.1039/d4ee00977k
Yu, HM; Wu, HW; Chow, YL; Wang, J; Zhang, J (2024) Revolutionizing electrochemical CO2 reduction to deeply reduced products on non-Cu-based electrocatalysts Energy & Environmental Science 10.1039/d4ee01301h
Kuang, YZ; Chen, GL; Rabiee, H; Ma, BB; Dorosti, F; Nanjundan, AK; Zhu, ZH; Wang, H; Ge, L (2024) Steering CO Selectivity in CO2 Electroreduction over Silver Microtubular Gas-Diffusion Electrodes via Surface Reconstruction Energy & Fuels 10.1021/acs.energyfuels.4c01240
Kaminskas, LM; Butcher, NJ; Subasic, CN; Kothapalli, A; Haque, S; Grace, JL; Morsdorf, A; Blanchfield, JT; Whittaker, AK; Quinn, JF; Whittaker, MR (2024) Lipidated brush-PEG polymers as low molecular weight pulmonary drug delivery platforms Expert Opinion On Drug Delivery 10.1080/17425247.2024.2305116
Zou, ZH; Dastafkan, K; Shao, Y; Zhao, C; Wang, QX (2024) Electrocatalysts for alkaline water electrolysis at ampere-level current densities: a review International Journal Of Hydrogen Energy 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2023.07.026
Chen, HW; Iyer, J; Liu, Y; Krebs, S; Deng, FL; Jentys, A; Searles, DJ; Haider, MA; Khare, R; Lercher, JA (2024) Mechanism of Electrocatalytic H2 Evolution, Carbonyl Hydrogenation, and Carbon-Carbon Coupling on Cu Journal Of The American Chemical Society 10.1021/jacs.4c01911
Loi, QK; Searles, DJ (2024) Reaction Dynamics of CO2 Hydrogenation on Iron Catalysts Using ReaxFF Molecular Dynamics Simulation Langmuir 10.1021/acs.langmuir.4c01212
McCallum, F; Hossain, MD; Blakey, I; Peng, H; Whittaker, AK (2024) Revealing the Chemical Interactions between PMMA and TMA for Insights into Sequential Infiltration Synthesis Macromolecules 10.1021/acs.macromol.4c01345
Lu, XT; Ren, LX; Zhang, XC; Whittaker, AK; Li, W; Zhang, AF (2024) Thermo/Light Dual-Responsive Helical Dendronized Poly(phenylacetylene)s Macromolecules 10.1021/acs.macromol.4c00677
Hao Chen, Qi Huang, Kang Yang, Sheng Chen, Hao Feng, Chen Jia, Qiang Li, Chuan Zhao, Jingjing Duan (2024) Tunable Ag-Ox coordination for industrial-level carbon-negative CO2 electrolysis Nano Energy https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2024.110265
Yang Y.; Zhang C.; Zhang C.; Shi Y.; Li J.; Johannessen B.; Liang Y.; Zhang S.; Song Q.; Zhang H.; Huang J.; Ke J.; Zhang L.; Song Q.; Zeng J.; Zhang Y.; Geng Z.; Wang P.-S.; Wang Z.; Zeng J.; Li F. (2024) Ligand-tuning copper in coordination polymers for efficient electrochemical C–C coupling Nature Communications 10.1038/s41467-024-50791-2
Xingyue Ma, Shuxuan Luo, Yunhui Hua, Seshadri Seetharaman, Xiaobo Zhu, Jingwei Hou, Lei Zhang, Wanlin Wang & Yongqi Sun (2024) An alumina phase induced composite transition shuttle to stabilize carbon capture cycles Nature Communications https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52016-y
Liang, YX; Li, F; Miao, RK; Hu, SP; Ni, WY; Zhang, SZ; Liu, YJ; Bai, Y; Wan, HY; Ou, PF; Li, XY; Wang, N; Park, S; Li, FW; Zeng, J; Sinton, D; Sargent, EH (2024) Efficient ethylene electrosynthesis through C-O cleavage promoted by water dissociation Nature Synthesis 10.1038/s44160-024-00568-8
Zhijie Chen, Gao-Feng Han, Asif Mahmood, Jingwei Hou, Wei Wei, Ho Kyong Shon, Guoxiu Wang, T. David Waite, Jong-Beom Baek, Bing-Jie Ni (2024) Mechanosynthesized electroactive materials for sustainable energy and environmental applications: A critical review Progress In Materials Science https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmatsci.2024.101299
Deng, YY; Liu, H; Lai, L; She, FX; Liu, FZ; Li, MH; Yu, ZX; Li, J; Zhu, D; Li, H; Wei, L; Chen, Y (2024) Platinum-Ruthenium Bimetallic Nanoparticle Catalysts Synthesized Via Direct Joule Heating for Methanol Fuel Cells Small 10.1002/smll.202403967

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Green Electrochemical Transformation of Carbon Dioxide (GETCO2) is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council.

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