Five Ways LiSA is Advancing Solar Fuels

3. Clarified the fundamentals of corrosion: How are ions born?

A project led by Shannon Boettcher, a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Energy Storage & Distributed Resources Division, and Martin Head-Gordon, a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Chemical Sciences Division, has created a validated molecular model which accurately delineates the rates at which ions - chemical species that carry electrical current in solutions - are created when a material rusts and dissolves. The advance will help researchers understand the fundamentals of corrosion in photoelectrochemical devices, a longstanding challenge to the commercialization of artificial photosynthesis. The model also maps out the rates at which ions are consumed at the interface between a solid and a liquid, such as when metals are plated from a solution to fabricate semiconductor chips.

By combining laboratory experiments with leading-edge computation, the team's collaborative study revealed the sequence of molecular events and the resulting barriers that control how fast ions can be formed or consumed. The researchers are currently expanding the approach to complex systems: The aim is to create a general theory that is of broad importance to electrochemical technology in renewable liquid fuel synthesis, batteries, and controlling corrosion processes.

The experimental work was completed at the University of Oregon, a partnering LiSA institution where Boettcher was a chemistry and biochemistry professor before joining Berkeley Lab.

4. Developed superfast X-ray techniques to observe a cutting-edge catalyst at work in real time

Copper is one of the best catalysts in artificial photosynthesis for converting CO₂ into liquid fuels like ethanol, ethylene, and propanol. Researchers have wanted to improve the efficiency and product yield of these reactions, but observing them under operando or real-world working conditions at the interface between metal and electrolyte has been a challenge. A project led by Junko Yano, a senior scientist and Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division Director at Berkeley Lab, could enable the operando characterization of chemical reactions that take place where metal and electrolyte meet. Using X-ray beamlines at SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource and Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source, the team is developing and applying techniques to determine where chemical reactions take place in active sites of a copper-liquid interface at relevant time scales. The work can enable new insight related to the catalytic mechanism and durability issues in artificial photosynthesis systems.