Inorganic Chemistry Seminar: Dr. Eva Nichols, Yale University
Inorganic Chemistry Seminar: Dr. Eva Nichols, Yale University (Host: Hema Karunadasa)
About the Talk
"Biologically-Inspired Control of Protons and Electrons for Sustainable Energy Transformations"
The development of molecular and materials electrocatalysts offers an attractive means to generate value-added products using abundant chemical feedstocks and sustainable energy. Various strategies employed by enzymes suggest a way forward for the design of improved synthetic catalysts, including precise positioning of secondary coordination sphere groups and the establishment of electric fields that are believed to contribute to reactivity.
The first part of this presentation will focus on the development of biologically-inspired molecular catalysts for electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction. The positional dependence of proton- and hydrogen bond donors in the second coordination sphere will be discussed in this context. In the second part, our focus will shift to examining electrode interfaces, where reaction conditions differ vastly from those in bulk solution. Using an infrared spectroelectrochemical approach, proton transfers can be followed as a function of applied potential and correlated with measured interfacial electric fields. This analysis establishes a starting point for the design of biologically-inspired electrocatalytic interfaces that resemble enzyme active sites with precisely tuned electric fields.
About the Speaker
Dr. Eva Nichols is currently an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University, working in the lab of Professor James Mayer. She earned a B.S. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2012, followed by her Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 2017. As an NSF graduate research fellow in the lab of Professor Christopher Chang, she examined the role of second coordination sphere groups in promoting electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction and developed hybrid bio-materials platforms for artificial photosynthesis. In her postdoctoral work, Dr. Nichols has employed infrared spectroscopy to study the potential dependence of proton transfers at electrode interfaces with the goal of understanding thermodynamic factors that govern electrocatalysis.