TANDEM SEMINAR: Photocatalysis meets Electrocatalysis

Tailor-made polymer electrodes for driving chemical reactions with electricity

Professor Alexander Giovannitti.

Abstract:
The development of more sustainable industrial processes is now, more than ever, critical for reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and helping slow down climate change. Electrochemical synthesis holds great promise to help lower the carbon footprint of the chemical industry since reactive intermediates are formed in situ, bypassing the need for synthesizing reactive intermediates and greatly lowering the formation of side products. While the field of electrochemical synthesis is rapidly maturing and highly selective processes are reported for a wide spectrum of reactions, the majority of electrode materials require rare elements to achieve high activity and selectivity. Relying on precious elements for developing the technology is a risk due to their scarcity, supply-chain bottlenecks, and high cost. The Giovannitti group develops novel electrode materials for electrochemical synthesis based on redox-active polymers using solely earth-abundant elements. In my talk, I will introduce this new class of material and describe how we plan to use this new electrode material for electrochemical synthesis.

Biography
Alexander Giovannitti received a Diplom in Chemistry from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. Alex holds a Master of Research (MRes) and PhD in Physics from Imperial College London, United Kingdom. As an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow, he joined the group of Prof. Jenny Nelson at Imperial College London at the Department of Physics. In 2019, Alex started his postdoc at Stanford University and joined the group of Prof. Alberto Salleo as a TomKat Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, United States of America. In April 2023, Alexander started his research group as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology

Soft PhotoElectroChemical Systems for Solar Fuels

Professor Erin Ratcliff

Abstract:

Highly scalable, durable π-conjugated polymer materials provide control over local environments afforded through synthesis, long-lived charge carrier lifetimes, and flexible, low-cost, and scalable thin film formats which circumvent the shortcomings of inorganic materials (surface states, grain boundaries, challenges in processing, and mechanically unstable platforms).

The Center for Soft PhotoElectroChemical Systems (SPECS) is an Energy Frontier Research Center focused on the basic science questions that underpin the development of low-cost, robust energy conversion and energy storage technologies based on new organic polymer (plastic) electronic materials. These materials are predicted to fill a critical position in the U.S. energy portfolio, providing for next-generation fuel-forming platforms (energy conversion) and batteries (energy storage) that cannot currently be achieved with conventional (hard) inorganic materials.

The realization of all-organic semiconductor systems that capture light energy and convert it into chemical energy requires a detailed understanding of structure-property relationships governing the interconnected dynamics of photo-generation, transport, and electron transfer across multiple interfaces. Dark electrochemical processes must be understood before increasing the complexity via light-matter interactions. This talk will focus on increasing complex, multiple interface platforms, towards the goal of photons-to-electrons-to-molecules energy conversion processes. A number of emerging in situ/operando spectroelectrochemical and scanning electrochemical cell microscopy approaches will be discussed for this exciting new area of energy conversion.

Biography
Prof. Erin Ratcliff is an Associate Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Arizona, with courtesy appointments in Materials Science and Engineering and Chemistry and Biochemistry and holds a joint appointment at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

She earned a B.A. in Chemistry, Mathematics, and Statistics in 2003 from St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN and a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Iowa State University in 2007. Her group “Laboratory for Interface Science for Printable Electronic Materials” uses a combination of electrochemistry, spectroscopies, microscopies, and synchrotron-based techniques to understand fundamental structure-property relationships of next-generation materials. Materials of interest include metal halide perovskites, π-conjugated materials, colloidal quantum dots, and metal oxides.

Current research is focused on mechanisms of electron transfer and transport across interfaces, including semiconductor/electrolyte interfaces and durability of printable electronic materials. Professor Ratliff is also the Director of the newly funded Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) entitled “Center for Soft PhotoElectroChemical Systems (SPECS)” and the co-director for the Institute for Energy Solutions at the UArizona.

She has received several awards for her research and teaching, including the 2023 Da Vinci Fellow, 2022 College of Engineering Researcher of the Year award, The Ten at Ten People of Energy Frontier Research Centers DOE Basic Energy Sciences award in 2019, Most Supportive Junior Faculty Member in Materials Science (2019), and Senior Summer Faculty Research Fellow at the Naval Research Laboratory (2020, 2021).