We seek economic ways to produce hydrogen gas at high purity and industrial scale. We are currently exploring oxidation of traditionally toxic chemicals like SO2, HCl, and HBr in PEM-style electrolyzers to remediate these waste materials into higher-value products while simulataneously producing pure hydrogen gas for use as fuel or reactant.
Conversion of solar energy to high-value chemicals and fuels is a vital path to reducing the effect of carbon dioxide production and increase the economic viability of solar power. Our research focuses on the synthesis and characterization of new photoactive materials for water oxidation and carbon dioxide reduction.
An important aspect of catalytic study is to differentiate between ensembles and individual particles. We study individual particles using low-current and low-potential techniques that exploit variation in catalytic activity of different materials for different reactions.
We synthesize new photoactive materials for both electricity generation and solar fuel conversion. In particular, we focus on metal oxynitrides, metal nitrides, and metal oxysulfides.