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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><a href="https://www.chee.uh.edu" target="_blank"><span style="color:#C8102E;text-decoration:none"><img border="0" width="600" height="165" style="width:6.25in;height:1.7187in" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://www.egr.uh.edu/sites/www.egr.uh.edu/files/enews/2022/images/sa_header.png" alt="William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Seminar Series"></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><b><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Teaching Old Electrocatalysts New Tricks: Merging Concepts from Thermal Catalysis and Molecular Synthesis<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
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<strong><span style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Jason S. Bates</span></strong><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><br>
Postdoctoral Fellow<br>
University of Wisconsin-Madison<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<strong><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Monday, February 6 2023 | 10:00am</span></strong><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><br>
</span><strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">CEMO room 105</span></strong></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<strong><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#C8102E">LECTURE ABSTRACT</span></strong><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#C8102E"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Decarbonizing the energy and chemical industries motivates the development of new catalytic technologies that use renewable energy inputs, alternative
feedstocks, and spatially distributed production modalities. In this context, electrocatalysts are tasked with producing fuels, chemicals, and energy by mechanisms that fundamentally differ from those of electrolyzer and fuel cell technologies, and the thermocatalytic
technologies of incumbent petrochemical processes. In this presentation I will show how concepts from thermal and molecular catalysis can stimulate new approaches for the synthesis and application of a class of heterogeneous
<span style="color:black">electrocatalysts known as M-N-Cs, or metals incorporated into nitrogen-doped carbon. M-N-Cs (e.g., M = Fe, Co) catalyze electrochemical reduction of O<sub>2</sub>, such as in fuel cells, and catalyze thermochemical reduction of O<sub>2</sub>
using hydroquinone (HQ) as the source of reducing equivalents. Kinetic studies reveal an unexpected mechanism for HQ-mediated O<sub>2</sub> reduction through</span> a direct chemical pathway facilitated by a catalyst microenvironment modified by adsorbed HQ
species. This alternative mechanism circumvents the rate–potential relationship observed for electrocatalytic O<sub>2</sub> reduction, opening new opportunities to design fuel cell systems that reduce O<sub>2</sub> with higher energy efficiency (i.e., lower
overpotential). In a complementary effort, Fe-N-C heterogeneous catalysts were prepared to contain atomically dispersed metal active sites by adapting synthetic strategies used to metalate molecular macrocycle catalysts under solution-phase conditions and
milder temperatures (150 °C) than those of conventional pyrolysis-based preparation routes (600–1100
</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">°</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">C). These well-defined Fe-N-C catalysts directly implicate atomically dispersed FeN<sub>x</sub> moieties as the active
sites for aerobic oxidation reactions. These studies show how thermochemical and molecular concepts can be leveraged to understand and improve the structure and function of electrocatalysts that are critical for next-generation energy and chemical conversion
processes.</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<strong><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#C8102E">SPEAKER BIOSKETCH</span></strong><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#C8102E"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Jason S. Bates received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Kansas in 2014 and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Purdue University in 2019, under the supervision
of Rajamani Gounder. He is currently an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the Department of Chemistry, under the supervision of Shannon S. Stahl. His research explores the fundamentals of heterogeneous (electro)catalysis in
areas relevant to decarbonization of the energy and chemical industries.</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<em><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">This is an official message sent by the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering.</span></em><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><a href="https://www.chee.uh.edu" target="_blank"><span style="color:#C8102E;text-decoration:none"><img border="0" width="600" height="165" style="width:6.25in;height:1.7187in" id="_x0000_i1027" src="https://www.egr.uh.edu/sites/www.egr.uh.edu/files/enews/2022/images/sa_footer.png" alt="William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering"></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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