The development of clean and sustainable energy sources is critical for the economic and environmental vitality of human civilization. Renewables, such as sun and wind power, are intermittent and thus expensive to integrate with fossil fuels at the capacity needed to power the planet. Scalable, inexpensive energy-storage technologies are needed. In this project, Dr. Boettcher (University of Oregon) is collaborating with Dr. Ayers at Proton OnSite / Nel Hydrogen (Wallingford, Connecticut) to study the conversion of water (H2O) into hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) gas using renewable electricity as the input. Hydrogen gas is a sustainable, carbon-free, renewable fuel to replace fossil fuels. It can be used in fuel cells to re-generate electricity on demand or burned like natural gas, without carbon dioxide emission. This research is addressing the inefficiency of the oxygen production part of the overall reaction. The team combines fundamental studies to understand how this reaction occurs and how to improve it. The industry-academic collaboration is testing the findings in commercially-relevant systems. In one example, the team is studying how chemical species containing iron, when placed in different environments, speed up the generation of oxygen and save energy in making hydrogen. The team is working to understand how these iron species change under long-term practical operating conditions. The team is also designing new materials that work well with existing technology but are less expensive to manufacture. The graduate students working on the project complete industry internships at Proton OnSite. The team conducts outreach activities with local middle school students that engages them in hands-on energy storage and sustainability laboratory activities on the University of Oregon campus, and introduces first year university students to scientific research through research-immersion courses. Funding for this award is provided by the Chemical Catalysis Program in the Division of Chemistry and the Catalysis Program in Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems.
Professor Shannon Boettcher from the University of Oregon (UO) is collaborating with Dr. Kathy Ayers at Proton OnSite / Nel Hydrogen (Wallingford, CT) and her team to use well-controlled electrochemical synthesis to create Fe in different local environments in transition-metal oxyhydroxide and oxide phases and probe OER mechanism and activity/durability relationships using a host of advanced operando techniques. They uncover the compositional, structural, and morphological dynamics that drive performance degradation in (oxy)hydroxide/oxide OER catalysts under long-durations and high-current densities. The team also creates new synthetic approaches to assemble precious-metal OER catalysts for use in proton-exchange-membrane electrolyzers where every precious metal atom is available to drive the OER while chemically stabilized by appropriate oxo linkages to inactive metal cations and through support interactions. This research has the potential to decouple the apparent inverse relationship observed between stability and activity for OER catalysts while connecting industry and academic researchers through graduate-student internships at Nel Hydrogen / Proton Onsite and industry researcher visits to Oregon. These science aims are coupled with outreach and education activities. Graduate students lead teams of undergraduates through a ?research-immersion? course developed by Boettcher that enables first-year chemistry students to earn credit for general chemistry laboratory by working on real, unsolved scientific questions. Hands-on middle school outreach events in the area of energy and electrochemistry are available to underserved students through an ongoing program founded by Boettcher. Funding for this award is provided by the Chemical Catalysis Program in the Division of Chemistry and the Catalysis Program in Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
