Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Modern materials electrochemistry has enormous potential to improve industrial, medicinal, and energy applications. One significant barrier is the lack of soft, flexible electrode materials. The goal of our research program is to create materials that can fill this gap by exploiting both solid/solution and liquid|liquid interfaces (LLI). Small variations (nano or molecular scale) in the surface reactivity of a material can be resolved at the single entity/individual level and lend physical insight into how that material will behave/perform at the large scale. Our approach uses nano-level investigations to optimize reaction efficiency, lower the reaction energy, and improve analytical/device performance. We then combine these data with large scale or ensemble methods to provide complementary, tangible evidence of device scalability. Long-term objectives include creation of micro-/nanoelectrodes capable of long-term bioimplantation in the treatment of Parkinson's disease; electrocatalysts capable of efficient CO2 conversion to useful value-added commodities; and robust sensors for environmental, ship-board trace metal detection in the open ocean. Fundamentally, we seek to establish a better understanding of interfacial heterogeneities (i.e., minute surface variations) giving rise to synergistic catalytic effects and analytical sensitivity. Our short-term objectives are divided into 4 areas, including (1) electrosynthetic method/material development (i.e., electronically controlled synthetic reactions); (2) electrocatalysis (i.e., enhanced electrode reactions with lowered energy cost); (3) environmental/(bio)sensor creation; (4) and single entity electrochemistry (SEE) sensors. In area 1, we have successfully used LLI (e.g., between water|oil) as an electrosynthetic platform to make nanomaterials and demonstrated the electrogeneration of free-standing, ultra-thin (1µm) nanocomposite films. These films are small enough to fit in-between neurons and have good biocompatibility so that they may one day be used as implantable electrodes to control artificial limbs or as brain-machine communication devices. In area 2, The nanocomposites can also be used for electrocatalysis. In catalysis, the overall energy required for a reaction is lowered while the product selectivity is enhanced. Thus, these materials will be investigated towards carbon dioxide conversion to useful chemical products (e.g., ethanol) and water splitting reactions (e.g., hydrogen generation which can be used as a fuel source). Our electroanalytical method development (areas 3 and 4) will also focus on the creation of point-of-care devices for medicine and environmental monitoring. In summary, harnessing our new electrosynthetic methods we can arrive at a diverse set of nanomaterials that are electroactive and/or polymerizable, which can be utilized to in a series of applications, including CO2 utilization, biomedical applications, and environmental monitoring.