Hailiang Wang

About

Hailiang Wang is a Professor of Chemistry and the Director of Graduate Studies at Yale University, a member of the Yale faculty since 2014. His research interests encompass Materials Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and Physical Chemistry, with a focus on developing systems for the precise interconversion of chemical and electrical or solar energy. His work aims to address global challenges related to clean energy, carbon emission mitigation, and environmental protection by developing catalysts and catalytic processes for energy and environmental applications. His research group investigates heterogeneous molecular catalysts for electrochemical conversion of small molecules such as CO2, nitrate, and volatile organic compounds, as well as photochemistry for solar energy utilization, nanoscale interactions for cooperative electrocatalysis, interface chemistry in high-energy batteries, and applications of electrocatalysis and photocatalysis in air and water treatment.

Research topics

• Chemistry
• Organic chemistry
• Nanotechnology
• Physical chemistry
• Composite material
• Combinatorial chemistry
• Materials science
• Inorganic chemistry
• Chemical engineering
• Metallurgy

Selected publications

• Molecular engineering of dispersed nickel phthalocyanines on carbon nanotubes for selective CO2 reduction

  Nature Energy · 2020 · 616 citations

  DOI

• Direct electrosynthesis of methylamine from carbon dioxide and nitrate

  Nature Sustainability · 2021 · 426 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Accessing Organonitrogen Compounds via C–N Coupling in Electrocatalytic CO₂ Reduction

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2021 · 328 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Given the limited product variety of electrocatalytic CO2 reduction reactions solely from CO2 and H2O as the reactants, it is desirable to expand the product scope by introducing additional reactants that provide elemental diversity. The integration of inorganic heteroatom-containing reactants into electrocatalytic CO2 reduction could, in principle, enable the sustainable synthesis of valuable products, such as organonitrogen compounds, which have widespread applications but typically rely on NH…

  DOI

• Electrocatalytic Reductive Amination of Aldehydes and Ketones with Aqueous Nitrite

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025-03-11 · 34 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  The electrocatalytic utilization of oxidized nitrogen waste for C-N coupling chemistry is an exciting research area with great potential to be adopted as a sustainable method for generation of organonitrogen molecules. The most widely used C-N coupling reaction is reductive amination. In this work, we develop an alternative electrochemical reductive amination reaction that can proceed in neutral aqueous electrolyte with nitrite as the nitrogenous reactant and via an oxime intermediate. We develo…

  PublisherDOI

• Synergizing catalytic activity and electronic structure adjustment by dual-atomic sites for high-performance lithium–sulfur batteries

  Energy storage materials · 2025-05-19 · 9 citations

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Developing Sulfur Cathode Materials for Electrochemical Energy Storage

  NSF · $522k · 2019–2022

• Interparticle Metal-Metal Interactions in Electrocatalytic Carbon Dioxide Reduction Reactions

  NSF · $445k · 2020–2023

• CAREER: Heterogeneous Molecular Catalysts for Electrochemical CO2 Reduction

  NSF · $700k · 2017–2023

Frequent coauthors

• Hongjie Dai

  Southwest University

  62 shared

• Yongye Liang

  Southern University of Science and Technology

  45 shared

• Wen Liu

  Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering Tianjin

  44 shared

• Yueshen Wu

  ShanghaiTech University

  43 shared

• Yiren Zhong

  Beijing Normal University

  43 shared

• Zishan Wu

  China Agricultural University

  33 shared

• Conor L. Rooney

  Yale University

  29 shared

• Gábor A. Somorjai

  University of California, Berkeley

  27 shared

Education

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Chemistry

  University of California, Berkeley

  2014

• PhD, Chemistry

  Stanford University

  2012

• BS, Chemistry

  Peking University

  2007

Awards & honors

• Young Investigator Award, Division of Inorganic Chemistry, A…
• IUPAC Prize for Young Chemists (2013)
• Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher (Chemistry) (2016-pre…
• Emerging Investigator, J. Mater. Chem. A, Royal Society of C…
• NSF CAREER Award (2017)

Similar researchers at Yale University

• Liangbing Huh-172
• Gary Brudvigh-103
• Fengnian Xiah-83