Carbon-neutral fuels are essential to address future energy demands while mitigating environmental challenges. Photothermal and photocatalytic routes offer efficient, low-cost and sustainable methods to convert solar energy into chemical fuels. This seminar will focus on the catalytic behavior of advanced nanostructured materials, particularly single-atom catalysts, two-dimensional materials, and engineered metal oxides, for energy-related transformations. Special attention will be given to photothermal CO₂ hydrogenation into multi-carbon products, photothermal ammonia (NH₃) synthesis, and photocatalytic CO₂ conversion coupled with H₂ evolution. The presentation will highlight how single-atom catalysis and synergistic heterostructure design can drastically improve activity, selectivity, and stability of these processes. Key mechanistic insights and experimental parameters influencing catalytic efficiency will also be discussed. With these advancements, the research paves the way for large-scale solar-to-fuel conversion technologies for sustainable energy applications.

Short Biography of the Speaker:

Dr. Fazal Raziq obtained his Master degree in Pakistan before being awarded a prestigious Chinese Government Scholarship to pursue his PhD, which he completed in 2017 with a focus on two-dimensional materials, particularly g-C₃N₄. During his PhD studies, he received the Outstanding Student Award from the Chinese Government Council. Following his doctorate, he joined the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China as a postdoctoral researcher and, in 2021, was appointed as a Research Associate. In 2022, he secured a postdoctoral fellowship at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), where he worked under the supervision of Professors Huabin Zhang and Jorge Gascon. During this period, he specialized in single-atom catalysis and contributed to a landmark Aramco-funded project on large-scale hydrogen evolution from seawater, which resulted in four U.S. patents.

After completing his term at KAUST, Dr. Raziq returned to China to continue his research, and in 2025 he was appointed Associate Professor at Chuxiong Normal University in Kunming, Yunnan. To date, he has published nearly 110 papers in high-impact journals, including Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), Advanced Materials, Advanced Energy Materials, and ACS Nano, with more than 7,600 citations and an H-index of 47. Dr. Fazal is also a permanent member of the funding review committee for researchers at UESTC. His current research spans multiple dimensions of catalysis, including photocatalysis, photothermal catalysis, and photoelectrocatalysis, with a strong emphasis on sustainable energy applications.