Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Electrochemical reactions have wide ranging applications including sensors, batteries, fuel cells, and chemical synthesis. However, many desired reactions are slow and inefficient, and therefore impractical. This research program aims to develop new chemistry and composite electrode materials that will lead to better electrodes for a wide range of applications. The focus of the work will be on two reactions that have the potential to greatly decrease the world's dependence on fossil fuel and production of green house gas emissions: ethanol oxidation and carbon dioxide reduction. Both of these electrochemical reactions would be of immense commercial and societal value if they could be carried out efficiently. Ethanol oxidation would be used in direct ethanol fuel cells to operate vehicles and produce residential and consumer electricity from a renewable fuel source (no net carbon dioxide emission), while carbon dioxide reduction would produce fuel from a green house gas. In a novel approach to increasing the efficiency of electrochemical reactions (electrocatalysis), we plan to develop new chemistry that will allow us to construct multifunctional electrode materials. Each component of the new material will have a specific function to speed up the overall reaction. Thus, in ethanol oxidation, a carbon or metal oxide support will remove electrons from the ethanol molecules which will be adsorbed onto Pt nanoparticles to break them up. A molecular catalyst (metal complex) at the surface of the Pt particle will release the product carbon dioxide. Similar catalysts will be used to essentially do the reverse of these processes to reduce carbon dioxide to useful fuels such as methanol or formic acid that can be used in fuel cells. The key challenges in this work are to design and synthesize suitable molecular catalysts, and to attach these to high surface area carbon or metal oxide supports.