Xiang Yu

Postdoctoral researcher
Utrecht University

Department

Chemistry

Contact information

Room
Building VMC

Email address
x.yu@uu.nl

Key expertises

heterogeneous catalysis, operando spectroscopy, DFT calculations, microkinetic modelling, programmable catalysis, etc.

About me

I’m from Wuhu, China. I earned my bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Tianjin and Xiamen Universities, then completed my PhD and a postdoc project at Utrecht University with Bert Weckhuysen and Matteo Monai. I’m now starting a new postdoc project with Matteo Monai and Nikolay Kosinov on Mixed Isotope Operando Infrared Spectroscopy. I love photography, psychedelic rock, plants, philosophy, and all those fancy but entirely useless things.

About my research

CO infrared spectroscopy is a key probe of catalyst surface in reactions like Fischer–Tropsch synthesis, CO₂ hydrogenation/reduction, and the water–gas shift. Vibrational coupling, however, complicates spectral interpretation. We aim to deconvolute this using ¹²CO/¹³CO mixtures through Mixed Isotope Operando Infrared Spectroscopy (MIOIS). We propose to develop a spectroscopic toolkit—MIOIS combined with kinetic isotope effects (KIE), to evaluate its effectiveness and sensitivity for probing different metals and surface structures. We also propose to integrate spectroscopic calculations with machine learning to assign and interpret MIOIS signals, and ultimately use the acquired insights to understand the structural dynamics of catalysts under reaction conditions.

Academic career

Postdoctoral experience

2024- 2024: Postdoctoral research fellow in the group of Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, under the supervision of Matteo Monai.

Early Stage Researcher

2019-2024: Doctoral degree in the group of Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis at Utrecht University, under the supervision of Prof. B.M. Weckhuysen
2016-2019: Master degree in the group of Physical Chemistry at Xiamen University, under the supervision of Prof. Xiaodong Yi
2012-2016: Bachelor degree in the department of Chemical Engineering at Tianjin University.

ARC CBBC publications

Identical Grain Atomic Force Microscopy Elucidates Facet-Dependent Restructuring of Copper for CO2 Electroreduction

Hui Wang, Dr. Laurens D. B. Mandemaker, Jim de Ruiter, Xiang Yu, Dr. Ward van der Stam, Prof. Dr. Bert M. Weckhuysen