Catalysis

Tuning transition metal nanoparticles on a non-traditional support via experimental design

Daniel Morton — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 20:11:16 +0000

Tuning transition metal nanoparticles on a non-traditional support via experimental design Daniel Morton Fri, 08/01/2025 - 14:11

APPLIED CATALYSIS A: GENERAL, 2025, 706, 120464

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Pre-steady-state kinetics of nanocrystal:molybdenum nitrogenase biohybrids reveals hole-scavenging efficiency is critical to N2 reduction

Daniel Morton — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:59:40 +0000

Pre-steady-state kinetics of nanocrystal:molybdenum nitrogenase biohybrids reveals hole-scavenging efficiency is critical to N2 reduction Daniel Morton Wed, 07/30/2025 - 13:59

CELL REPORTS PHYSICAL SCIENCE, 2025, 102732

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Electrolyte Immersion Increases Photoconductivity in a Model Polymer Photocathode

Daniel Morton — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 19:41:39 +0000

Electrolyte Immersion Increases Photoconductivity in a Model Polymer Photocathode Daniel Morton Mon, 07/28/2025 - 13:41

ACS ENERGY LETTERS, 2025, 10, 4019-4026

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Surface Acidity of Oxygen Evolution Intermediates by Excited State Optical Spectroscopy

Daniel Morton — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 19:37:57 +0000

Surface Acidity of Oxygen Evolution Intermediates by Excited State Optical Spectroscopy Daniel Morton Mon, 07/28/2025 - 13:37

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, 2025, 147, 31, 28474-28483

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Using Pore Window Size to Control Selectivity for Acetylene Hydrogenation on Pd@LTA Zeolite Catalysts

Daniel Morton — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 19:24:36 +0000

Using Pore Window Size to Control Selectivity for Acetylene Hydrogenation on Pd@LTA Zeolite Catalysts Daniel Morton Mon, 07/14/2025 - 13:24

ACS CATALYSIS, 2025, 12816-12821

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Photolytic activation of Ni(II)X2L explains how Ni-mediated cross coupling begins

Daniel Morton — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 17:11:39 +0000

Photolytic activation of Ni(II)X2L explains how Ni-mediated cross coupling begins Daniel Morton Tue, 07/01/2025 - 11:11

NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, 2025, 16, 5530

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Light-powered reactions could make the chemical manufacturing industry more energy-efficient

Daniel Morton — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 22:25:34 +0000

Light-powered reactions could make the chemical manufacturing industry more energy-efficient Daniel Morton Thu, 06/26/2025 - 16:25

Daniel Morton

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The Conversation Highlight

SuPRCat

Research Article

Chemistry World Highlight

Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine Highlight

A recent collaborative report, published in Science, including RASEI Fellow Niels Damrauer, addresses a key issue for light-driven chemistry, potentially opening up possibilities for future energy-efficient chemical manufacturing.

Chemical reactions typically require an input of energy to proceed, this can be through heating, or introduction of chemical energy in the form of reactive chemicals. Recently, light-driven chemistry has emerged as a more energy efficient alternative. The principle is to use energy from light, which is absorbed by a catalyst. Excited by the light energy the catalyst can then donate an electron to the chemicals undergoing the desired chemical transformation.

This sounds great – light-driven reactions? One of the key issues in this class of chemistry is back transfer of the electron. This means that after the catalyst donates the electron to the reagents, instead of doing the desired reaction, the reagent gives the electron back to the catalyst. This can significantly slow down the desired reaction, even sometimes shutting it down.

This report details a new type of catalyst that can overcome this back transfer of electrons. Through rationale design of the catalyst the new system uses a chemical reaction as a catch, preventing the back transfer from the reagent and strongly favoring the desired reaction.

To highlight the impact of this work, which was completed as part of the NSF Center for Chemical Innovation Center for Sustainable Photoredox Catalysis (SuPRCat), �山�� student Arindam Sau, a member of the Damrauer group, teamed up with a graduate student and postdoc from Colorado State University to put together a review and summary of this work that was recently published in The Conversation. Check out the highlight to get a full picture of the impact of this work.

June 2025

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Cooperative effects associated with high electrolyte concentrations in driving the conversion of CO2 to C2H4 on copper

Daniel Morton — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 19:22:57 +0000

Cooperative effects associated with high electrolyte concentrations in driving the conversion of CO2 to C2H4 on copper Daniel Morton Thu, 06/19/2025 - 13:22

CHEM CATALYSIS, 2025, 5, 6, 101338

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Efficient super-reducing organic photoredox catalysis with proton-coupled electron transfer mitigated back electron transfer

Daniel Morton — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 17:38:42 +0000

Efficient super-reducing organic photoredox catalysis with proton-coupled electron transfer mitigated back electron transfer Daniel Morton Thu, 06/19/2025 - 11:38

SCIENCE, 2025, 388, 6753, 1294-1300

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Electricity, Air, and Plastic Recycling

Daniel Morton — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 21:15:48 +0000

Electricity, Air, and Plastic Recycling Daniel Morton Tue, 06/17/2025 - 15:15

Daniel Morton

This collaboration between four RASEI Fellows shows how electricity can be used to impart ‘superoxide powers’ to oxygen gas molecules from air, enabling the efficient recycling of PET plastics.

In 2012, 32.5 million tons of plastic waste was produced globally. 4.5 million tons of which was poly(ethylene terephthalate), better known as PET. You likely know this as the plastic that has the number 1 in the middle of the recycling symbol. PET is used extensively in materials such as packaging, textiles, films, and flexible electronics. By far and away its main use is in bottled drinks. PET is considered a standout material, it is strong, chemically resistant, transparent, and impermeable to water. Even better, it is possible to recycle PET – it has its own number, right? Unfortunately, this is not quite the full story. Globally, it is estimated that only about 9% of plastic waste is recycled, and while PET waste is one of the best performers, with a recycling rate approaching between 25-30%, the majority of plastic, even PET, ultimately ends up in landfills, incinerated, or worse, polluting our environment. The magnitude of this problem is only increasing; in 2024 the world generated an estimated 240 million tons of plastic waste, representing more than eight-fold increase in 12 years and highlighting the need for more effective solutions.

This teams bring together four RASEI Fellows, Oana Luca (Chemistry, �山��), Seth Marder (Chemistry and Chemical & Biological Engineering, �山��), Stephen Barlow (RASEI, �山��) and Elisa Miller (Chemistry and Nanoscience, NREL) to address the accelerating issue of plastic waste. While there are many parts to this global challenge, this research focuses on how we recycle plastics, specifically PET. When we think about recycling plastic, most of us just think about throwing a plastic bottle, or piece of packaging, into a recycling bin. We rarely give it much thought after that. This really is just the start of a journey that is more complex than many realize. There are actually several different approaches to giving plastic a second life. The most common, and perhaps the method that most people are familiar with, is mechanical recycling.

Think of mechanical recycling like an industrial washing machine combined with a paper shredder. Plastic items are collected, sorted, cleaned, and then chopped up into small flakes or melted down into pellets that can be molded into new products. This approach is efficient and works great for clean, single-type plastics, but there are some significant limitations with this process. In the same way that a white shirt can’t be perfectly restored after being mixed with brightly colored laundry, plastic quality degrades each time it goes through mechanical recycling. This reduction in quality is stark, most mechanically recycled plastics can only go through the process 2-3 times before they become unusable. This makes it financially unattractive and severely limits the long-term efficacy of recycling. How can this be an enduring solution if we can only recycle something a couple of times?

Chemical recycling takes a very different route, instead of the ‘brute-force’ approach of just melting and reshaping the plastic, it employs a more surgical method, breaking down the plastic polymer chains into their constituent molecular building blocks. These molecular building blocks can then be used, either to make new plastics, or for other applications. Because the new plastics are made with molecular control, there is no degradation in quality, and the materials can be recycled over and over, essentially as many times as you wish. Instead of a washing machine combined with a paper shredder, this is more like a LEGO set, where the model can be taken apart brick by brick and be used to build something entirely new. This research describes a new approach to depolymerization, a class of chemical recycling.

The research described in this RASEI collaboration, just published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering, offers a new, more efficient approach. By passing an electric charge through the reaction, electrons can be used to activate molecules that can then go on to react with the polymer. In a recent study, that used additive molecules as electron shuttles, the team observed the addition of electrons to oxygen gas molecules in small amounts present in the reaction, that were originally thought to be innocent bystanders in the mixture. This led the team to hypothesize that oxygen gas molecules, directly from air, could be chemically reduced, (that is that they take on an extra electron), leading to the formation of a relatively stable superoxide radical anion, O₂^·–. This activated superoxide now acts in place of the solvent and reacts directly with the polymer. Since the superoxide has an extra electron gained from the electric current, the negatively charged superoxide molecule reacts with the centers that have a positive charge on the polymer. This results in the breaking down of the polymer in a predictable and selective fashion, and the incorporation of oxygen into the building blocks instead of the solvent molecules, leading to the reliable and reproducible formation of the same molecules that were used to build the polymer in the first place. The LEGO bricks are formed cleanly and are ready to be used again, with no degradation in molecular quality. This work demonstrates this technology on a range of different plastics using air, arguably one of the most abundant and cheap reagents, as the primary oxygen source, and all done at room temperature and pressure, a huge improvement on other chemical recycling approaches. While the results are promising and show good efficiencies, this lab-based proof of principle still has a number of challenges to solve before it can be scaled up to meaningful levels.

Today, most plastics are recycled using mechanical recycling, which is like the combination of an industrial washing machine and a paper shredder, producing low-quality products and reducing the possibility of future recycling, leading many to explore chemical recycling as an alternative to gain access to more valuable chemical building blocks. Current mainstream chemical recycling methods are like using a sledgehammer, they typically require high temperatures and lots of energy to break the chemical bonds. The development of electrochemical methods offers a more controlled approach, breaking down plastics at the molecular level and reliably producing build blocks that can be used over and over again. New recycling technologies could transform how we handle plastic waste, opening the door to recycling previously un-recyclable plastics, doing it in a more energy efficient way, producing higher quality recycled plastics, and making recycling economically competitive with virgin plastic production from oil. The development of more effective and general recycling strategies isn’t just an environmental imperative. As plastic waste continues to accumulate, it is rapidly becoming an economic necessity. We already have so much plastic in the world, if we can develop methods to regenerate and reuse the building blocks from plastic waste it will turn landfills into gold mines.

How amazing would it be if instead of society wasting plastics, filling landfills, and polluting our environments, we viewed used plastics as a commodity for future applications?

June 2025

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