Associate Professor Chong's research interests are nanotechnology, environmental photocatalysis, sustainable energy and water technology, water resources management and sustainability.

To date, he has published more than 160 publications in high-impact journals, conference proceedings, book chapters, and client consultancy reports and have obtained more than RM 2.3 million in research funding during his tenure at Monash University Malaysia. Assoc. Prof. Chong has completed an eScience project (Project code: 03-02-10-SF0121, 2012-2015) and a FRGS project (Project code: FRGS/1/2014/SG06/MUSM/02/1, 2014-2017).

Dwindling of carbon-derivative fuels, and the continuing search for alternative and renewable energy sources have led to our current research in the production of solar fuels from the oxidation of water molecule and reduction of carbon dioxide. Sunlight is present in abundance on Earth, and our research is developing novel nanostructured photoelectrodes that could capitalise and convert sunlight into various solar energy vectors in a photoelectrochemical cell. This production route is deemed cost-effective and sustainable, as it does not involve the need of fossil fuels and subsequent elimination on the emission of environmental deleterious greenhouse gases. However, the major technical bottlenecks of this production route are the low solar-to-chemical energy conversion efficiency and photostability of photoelectrodes. Our research group is actively designing novel nanostructured photoelectrodes using semiconductors, carbon materials, and polymers with further modifications using metal and non-metal doping, photosensitizers, and co-catalysts that could alleviate these technical bottlenecks. Whilst we also seek to understand the fundamentals of photophysics and photochemistry in the photoelectrodes that we designed through advanced characterisations using the state-of-the-art synchrotron facilities.

• CHE2162 - Material and Energy Balances
• CHE2164 - Thermodynamics 1
• CHE4172 - Nanotechnology and Materials 2
• CHE5885 - Principles and Practices for Sustainable Development