Publications related to Reducing agent

Solution-based Cu+ transient species mediate the reconstruction of copper electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction

Raffaella Buonsanti, Anna Loiudice, Petru Pasquale Albertini, Jan Vávra, Gaétan Philippe Louis Ramona

Understanding metal surface reconstruction is of the utmost importance in electrocatalysis, as this phenomenon directly affects the nature of available active sites. However, its dynamic nature renders surface reconstruction notoriously difficult to study. ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Tailoring nanocatalysts and reaction interfaces for water- and CO2-electrolysis

Thi Ha My Pham

Renewable energy sources offer a promising solution for mitigating sustainability and CO2 emissions-related issues due to their vast energy generation capacity. They enable hydrogen production via water electrolysis, as well as carbon capture and utilizati ...

EPFL2024

Methods for high-throughput synthesis and screening of peptide libraries

Zsolt Bognár

Macrocycles provide an attractive modality for drug development but the identification of ligands to targets of interest is hindered by the lack of large macrocyclic compound libraries for high-throughput screening. A strategy to efficiently synthesize lar ...

EPFL2024

Plasmonic Nanostructures for Photocatalysis: Material, Photonic and Electronic Effects

Fateme Kiani Shahvandi

Plasmonic photochemistry has a large potential to replace energy-intensive chemical processes with low-temperature, low-pressure light-driven chemical reactions. Plasmonic nanostructures have emerged as promising photocatalysts with exceptional and tunable ...

EPFL2024

Microstructure - Electrochemical Surface Reactivity Relationship of Electrochemically Grown Manganese Oxides Films

Roberto Cestaro

This Thesis provides a comprehensive and correlative investigation of the microstructure, chemical state, and electrochemical reactivity of manganese oxide (MnOx) films, aiming to gain a deeper understanding of the deposition and dissolution mechanism of M ...

EPFL2024

Metal-Free Molecular Catalysts for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction: Electron Affinity as an Activity Descriptor

Juliette Veronique Schleicher, Ganna Gryn'ova

Heteroatom-doped polyaromatic hydrocarbons (or nanographenes) are promising molecular electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Here, we use density functional theory to investigate the first step of the ORR pathway (chemisorption) for a se ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2023

Probing Water Dissociation and Oxygen Replacement on Partially Oxygen-Covered Cu(111) by Reflection Absorption Infrared Spectroscopy

Rainer Beck, Mateusz Suchodol, Harmina Vejayan

The presence of chemisorbed oxygen on the Cu(111) surface is known to strongly reduce the activation barrier for water dissociation as compared to bare Cu(111). Here, we present direct experimental evidence for the hydrogen abstraction mechanism responsibl ...

2023

Photocatalyzed [2σ + 2σ] and [2σ + 2π] Cycloadditions for the Synthesis of Bicyclo[3.1.1]heptanes and 5- or 6-Membered Carbocycles

Jérôme Waser, Matthew Wodrich, André Bossonnet

We report the use of photocatalysis for the homolytic ring-opening of carbonyl cyclopropanes. In contrast to previous studies, our approach does not require a metal cocatalyst or a strong reductant. The carbonyl cyclopropanes can be employed for both [2σ + ...

2023

Decarbonizing The Production of Primary Aluminium Using Renewable Resource

Aluminium is the second most widely used metal in the world, with a variety of applications ranging from transportation to food packaging and construction. While many aluminium producers target increased utilization of recycled aluminium to produce rolled ...

American Institute of Chemical Engineering2023

An Advanced Alkaline Al-Air Fuel Cell Using L-Ascorbic Acid Interface Layer upon Al Anode via Gradient Anti-corrosion

Pengfei Zhang, Manhui Wei

Al metal is considered as an excellent anode material for metal-air fuel cells thanks to the advantages in terms of capacity and energy density. However, the anodic parasitic corrosion has brought great obstacles to the performance breakthrough of Al-air f ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2023

Decoupling the Contributions of Different Instability Mechanisms to the PEMFC Performance Decay of Non-noble Metal O2-Reduction Catalysts

Vasiliki Tileli, Robin Pierre Alain Girod, Secil Unsal

Non-noble metal catalysts (NNMCs) hold the potential to replace the expensive Pt-based materials currently used to speed up the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) cathodes, but they feature poor durability that in ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2023

Proteome adaptations of the organohalide-respiring Desulfitobacterium hafniense strain DCB-2 to various energy metabolisms

Christof Holliger, Julien Maillard, Romain Hamelin, Mathilde Stéphanie Willemin, Florence Armand

IntroductionDesulfitobacterium hafniense was isolated for its ability to use organohalogens as terminal electron acceptors via organohalide respiration (OHR). In contrast to obligate OHR bacteria, Desulfitobacterium spp. show a highly versatile energy meta ...

Frontiers Media SA2023

Using Complex Hydrides for Hydrogen Storage and Direct Borohydride Fuel Cells for Electricity Production

Youngdon Ko

Hydrogen storage and utilization are the technologies to achieve carbon-neutral energy systems with renewable energy sources. Among the various materials that have been investigated, complex hydrides are a material exhibiting high gravimetric hydrogen dens ...

EPFL2023

Monitoring and understanding Cu catalyst dissolution during CO2 electroreduction

Jan Vávra

Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide is a promising approach to decrease the amount of anthropogenic CO2 being released into the atmosphere, provided that a surplus of renewable electrical energy is available. Copper based materials are at the cente ...

EPFL2022

Flowing Gas Experiments Reveal Mechanistic Details of Interfacial Reactions on a Molecular Level at Knudsen Flow Conditions

Christian Ludwig, Michel Rossi, Riccardo Iannarelli

Knudsen flow experiments and its interpretation in terms of adsorption/desorption kinetics as well as quantitative uptake on substrates of interest is presented together with the description of critical design parameters of the Knudsen Flow Reactor (KFR). ...

2022

The native oxide skin of liquid metal Ga nanoparticles prevents their rapid coalescence during electrocatalysis

Raffaella Buonsanti, Anna Loiudice, Dragos-Constantin Stoian, Jan Vávra, Valery Okatenko, Laia Castilla Amorós

Liquid metals (LMs) have been used in electrochemistry since the 19th century, but it is only recently that they have emerged as electrocatalysts with unique properties, such as inherent resistance to coke-poisoning, which derives from the dynamic nature o ...

2022

Solid-phase peptide synthesis on disulfide-linker resin followed by reductive release affords pure thiol-functionalized peptides

Christian Heinis, Zsolt Bognár, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Manuel Leonardo Merz, Ganesh Kumar Mothukuri, Peter Matei Frisius Pânzar

Thiol groups are suitable handles for site-selectively modifying, immobilizing or cyclizing individual peptides or entire peptide libraries. A limiting step in producing the thiol-functionalized peptides is the chromatographic purification, which is partic ...

2022

Stabilizing Unusual Oxidation States of Lanthanides in Molecular Complexes: Synthesis, Properties, and Reactivity

Aurélien René Willauer

The chemistry of divalent lanthanides has generated increasing interest in the past years due to their redox properties and unique reaction pathways. Notably, molecular complexes of low-valent lanthanides have been shown to be suitable one-electron reducta ...

EPFL2022

Beware of beam damage under reaction conditions: X-ray induced photochemical reduction of supported VOx catalysts during in situ XAS experiments

Oliver Kröcher, Davide Ferri, Anna Zabilska, Olga Safonova

In situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is a powerful technique for the investigation of heterogeneous catalysts and electrocatalysts. The obtained XAS spectra are usually interpreted from the point of view of the investigated chemical processes, there ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2022

Thermodynamic modelling of hydrogen production in sorbent-enhanced biochar-direct chemical looping process

Hydrogen (H-2) has been widely considered the clean energy carrier of choice for emerging renewable energy generation technologies. However, H-2 is a secondary fuel mainly derived from natural gas. Over the past decades, research on developing H-2 producti ...

2022