MSE Seminar – Prof. Ye CHEN (11 September 2025)

Metal nanomaterials combine high intrinsic catalytic activity with excellent stability, making them promising catalysts. However, conventional colloidal synthesis mainly emphasized control of morphology and composition, with less focus on deliberate lattice and phase engineering. This talk presents recent advances in facet-precise lattice engineering of metal nanocatalysts using wet-chemical methods and demonstrates their enhanced performance in electrocatalysis and heterogeneous catalysis. Prof. Chen will introduce two wet-synthetic lattice-engineering strategies-lattice "addition" and lattice "subtraction"- and present examples of unconventional crystal phases and their effects on activity, selectivity, and stability. These results establish new wet-chemical routes for facet-precise lattice design of metal nanomaterials and enable systematic exploration of how lattice structure and crystal phase govern catalytic properties. Finally, Prof. Chen will outline perspectives for rational nanocatalyst design and future research directions.