Energy Applications

Thermally Stable Anthracene-Based 2D/3D Heterostructures for Perovskite Solar Cells

Daniel Morton — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 03:38:26 +0000

Thermally Stable Anthracene-Based 2D/3D Heterostructures for Perovskite Solar Cells Daniel Morton Fri, 12/27/2024 - 20:38

ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES, 2024, ASAP

Off

Traditional

White

2024 Nozik Lecture | Matt Beard

Daniel Morton — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 02:09:36 +0000

2024 Nozik Lecture | Matt Beard Daniel Morton Fri, 12/20/2024 - 19:09

Find out more

Watch the Lecture

Matt Beard

The Arthur Nozik Lecture Series honors the research and career of Prof. Nozik, who has been a leader in the thriving ecosystem of renewable energy research that has developed along the front range over the last four decades. This lecture was recorded on December 9, 2024.

Biography:

Matthew C. Beard is a senior laboratory research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Director of the Center for Hybrid Organic Inorganic Semiconductors for Energy (CHOISE) and Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) funded by the Office of Science within DOE. Beard is also a Fellow of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute a joint research institute between NREL and CU ��«��Ƶ and an Adjoint professor within the Chemistry department of Colorado School of Mines. Beard has been at NREL since 2003 (working for Arthur Nozik) and before that graduated from the Yale Chemistry Department where he received his Ph.D. degree developing non-contact ultrafast probes of carrier dynamics in semiconductors and semiconductor nanocrystals with Charlie Schmuttenmaer. Beard also served as Associate director for the Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics. Beard is a fellow of the AAAS, American Physical Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. Beard is listed a Clarivate highly cited researcher from 2023-2018 with over 200 publications. Beard was awarded the 2020 H.M. Hubbard award, the 2022 E.O. Lawarence Award from DOE, the RSC Chemical Dynamics award, and NREL’s highest impact paper in 2024. Beard serves on the editorial boards of Phyiscal Review Letters (divisional editor), ACS Energy Letters and Journal of Chemical Physics. He has 10 patents and patent applications under review and given > 150 invited presentations, including being named the 2024 Alexander Cruickshank Gordon research conference lecturer, the 2022 McElvain lecturer at U. of Wisconsin, and the 2024 William Chupka Lecturer at Yale University.

12/09/2024

Off

Traditional

White

Catalyzing the Sustainable Decomposition of PFAS Forever Chemicals

Daniel Morton — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 00:30:44 +0000

Catalyzing the Sustainable Decomposition of PFAS Forever Chemicals Daniel Morton Fri, 12/20/2024 - 17:30

Daniel Morton

RASEI Fellow Niels Damrauer is part of a collaborative team that have developed a new light-driven C-F activation reaction, one that has the potential to help dismantle PFAS ‘forever chemicals’

Find out more

Read the Article

Highlight in The Conversation

C&EN Highlight

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are synthetic compounds that have found widespread use in consumer products and industrial applications. Their water and grease resistant properties have been part of their attraction in their applications, but these are also the reason that they are now found practically everywhere in the environment, they are very difficult to decompose.

While many chemicals will decompose relatively quickly, studies have shown that PFAS are expected to stick around for up to 1000 years. While this durability is great in something like firefighting foams or non-stick cookware, it is not great when these compounds get into the environment.

This new article, published in Nature in November of 2024, describes the work of a collaborative team of theoretical and experimental chemists, who have developed a new photochemical reaction that could hold promise of speeding up the decomposition of PFAS. A recent highlight of this work, written by the graduate student and postdoctoral fellows who did the research, appeared in The Conversation.

Using a photocatalyst, that absorbs light to speed up a reaction, the researchers were able to ‘activate’ one of the carbon-fluorine bonds, one of the strongest bonds in organic chemistry. The photocatalyst absorbs light, transfers electrons to the fluorine containing molecules, which then breaks down the sturdy carbon-fluorine bond.

While this doesn’t decompose the whole molecule, it is essentially like finding a chink in the armor, it opens the door to degradation of the PFAS to harmless smaller molecules.

Daniel Morton — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 20:12:12 +0000

2024 Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher Awards Daniel Morton Tue, 11/19/2024 - 13:12

Find out more:

2024 Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers

Five RASEI Fellows awarded the Highly Cited Researcher designation by Clarivate.

Each year Clarivate analyzes the citations of articles from researchers from across the sciences. From this analysis Clarivate highlights the researchers who have authored multiple highly cited papers which rank in the top 1% by citations for their field(s) and publication year in the Web of Science over the past decade.

This year five RASEI Fellows featured in the 2024 Highly Cited Researcher list, which includes 6,886 researchers. This year Matt Beard, Joe Berry, Joey Luther, Mike McGehee and Mike Toney were selected. For Matt, Mike and Joey, this is the fifth year in the row, the fourth year in a row for Joe Berry and the third year in a row for Mike Toney.

Congratulation to everyone for the recognition of the impact of their research.

11/19/2024

Off

Traditional

White