Hosted by: Anibal Boscoboinik

Abstract: Solar is becoming increasingly economical, aided by rapidly declining panel cost and increases in energy efficiencies. As solar gains momentum, electrochemical processes in which solar electricity can be used to transform readily available resources such as water and carbon dioxide to create fuels and high-valued chemicals represents an opportunity ripe for development. Presently, these transformations are not yet cost-effective, because of the slow kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Research efforts in the past decade have attributed this inefficiency to the imperfect stabilization of the intermediates; even commercial IrO2 catalysts have limitations. I will present an experimental assessment of this hypothesis on model single-crystalline oxide catalysts. Advances in thin-film deposition developed in the past few decades in the microelectronic community can now enable single-crystalline transition-metal oxides to be routinely grown with high structural perfection. We utilize these advances to experimentally examine the relationship between surface adsorption and OER on rutile IrO2 and perovskite SrIrO3. I will discuss the implications of these studies, including mechanistic insights and how to explore novel oxide phases that are not accessible via thermochemical means for electrocatalysis applications. Biography: Jin Suntivich is an assistant professor in Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University. Jin received B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, and B.A. in Integrated Science from Northwestern University, Sc.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT, and postdoctoral fellowship from Harvard University. At MIT and Harvard, Jin's research focused surface science investigations of oxide catalysts for electrochemical/chemical transformations of small molecules including reactions between oxygen, water, and methanol. At Cornell, Jin's group focuses on applying thin-film deposition and self-assembly synthesi