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Breakthroughs in materials science are helping to improve tomorrows energy storage

Daniel Morton — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 15:18:38 +0000

Breakthroughs in materials science are helping to improve tomorrows energy storage Daniel Morton Fri, 08/15/2025 - 09:18

Daniel Morton

The future of energy storage is being written at the molecular level. As renewable energy is transforming how we generate electricity, battery storage technologies are emerging as the backbone of a resilient, flexible power grid. Advances in materials science are key to unlocking their massive potential to change the way we interact with energy.

Effective and sustainable energy storage is critical to a modern and resilient power grid. Independent of how the electrons are generated, the ability to flexibly store and supply electricity strengthens the grid and improves our energy security.

The path to a reliable and sustainable energy economy runs directly through better, more efficient batteries. Today’s power grid demands storage solutions that are more efficient, built from materials that are abundant, affordable and environmentally responsible. This intersection of performance and sustainability presents one of the most exciting tensions in modern energy research.

In the last six months RASEI Fellows have publish more than ten research articles that explore a range of materials science challenges associated with battery storage, developing solutions at the molecular level that could have profound impacts on how we store energy on the grid-scale, here we highlight a selection of this recent work.

Why Batteries Are Essential For Grid Flexibility

Battery storage offers exceptional flexibility to a modern power grid, providing rapid response capabilities that can balance supply and demand within seconds rather than minutes or hours. A key benefit of battery systems is that they can be deployed virtually anywhere, from urban centers to remote locations, creating opportunities for more resilient and distributed grids that adapt to local needs and conditions.

Materials Science Engineering Charges Innovation

At its core, battery performance is fundamentally about engineering better materials: how molecules are structured, how electricity flows, and how charged particles travel through carefully designed and engineered structures. This is where cutting-edge materials science research is essential, providing the tools to better design battery components at the molecular scale to achieve faster charging, longer lifespans, and higher energy storage. These are features that will be critical as we scale up to grid-level storage.

Consider how a typical rechargeable battery, such as a lithium-ion battery, works: charged particles (such as lithium ions) move between the two sides of the battery during charging and discharging. Think of it like cars moving between parking lots (the two sides of the battery, the positive and negative electrodes). The ability to park more cars represents the ability to carry more energy. When you use the battery the cars (the lithium ions) travel between the lots through a highway (the electrolyte). To use the highway, they have to pay a toll. In this case they give up an electron, which produces the electricity that powers your device. When you charge the battery the cars move back to the original lot, but you have to give them an electron to go back through the toll.

Repeated charging and discharging can cause damage to the parking lots, the highway between them, and the cars can even get stuck. Building better electrodes (parking lots), more effective electrolytes (the highway) and better understanding of how the charged particles act (the cars), teams can develop more effective and robust energy storage.

Recent Research Highlights

Boron-Alloyed Silicon Nanoparticle Anodes can improve the performance for lithium-Ion Batteries.

Read the article here

By mixing some boron with your silicon you can make a more robust battery electrode!

With a theoretical energy density ten times higher than graphite, Silicon (Si) has inspired interest as a next generation anode active material for lithium-ion batteries. In the general analogy, this is building a more robust parking lot for the charged state. When you charge and discharge a lithium-ion battery, on a molecular scale this is achieved by the pumping in, and pumping out of lithium ions (cars going in and out of the parking lot), which come with a significant volume change. (This would be like the floors of a multi-story parking lot changing size as cars drive in and out. Realistic on the atomic scale, not so much on the car-scale…) Silicon-based anodes have been found to be unstable to this constant change in volume which can lead to instability and failure. One strategy to address this is to move from having the silicon anode being a solid slab, to being a series of nanoparticles, which helps to reduce this mechanical stress, but this comes with another problem, the increased surface area of the particles allows more chemical side reactions, which is another big problem. There has been much research investigating the materials science and surface chemistry to reduce the unwanted side reactions. A key finding from recent research is that the best way to prevent unwanted side reactions is to essentially isolate the silicon surface from the electrolyte media it is in. This is where this research, led by RASEI Fellow Nate Neale, comes in.

By mixing, or alloying, the silicon with boron, the anodes were found to perform better and last longer. The more boron added to the nanoparticles, the more robust they were. In fact, the team saw a 3x improvement in lifetime by incorporating boron. The team proposes that by making the nanoparticles out of a mixture of silicon and boron, the presence of the boron creates an “electric double layer” effect, essentially providing a protective layer at the surface of the nanoparticle, shielding from the unwanted side reactions. This saw some real improvements in the performance of the electrolytes, not just a 3x improvement in the calendar lifetime, but an 82.5% capacity retention after 1000 cycles, the pure silicon electrodes reached the end-of-life (<80% capacity retention) in fewer than 400 cycles under similar conditions.

Boron creates a strong electrical field at the nanoparticle surface that attracts and concentrates ions from the surrounding electrolyte, forming a stable, dense layer that acts like a permanent shield. This work reveals an underexplored parameter in the design and optimization of silicon anodes that could prove valuable in the next-generation of lithium-ion batteries.

This breakthrough could accelerate the adoption of silicon anodes in battery applications, such as electric vehicles, where longer-lasting batteries are essential to address range anxiety. The research team is now working to identify the optimal silicon-boron ratio that maximizes both capacity and longevity, potentially bringing us closer to the next generation of high-performance lithium-ion batteries.

How Molecular Shape Impacts Battery Performance: New Insights for Flow Batteries

Read the article here

Making seemingly minor molecular changes to the structure of charge storage chemicals can have significant impacts on the performance of redox flow batteries.

Redox Flow Batteries offer a promising solution for large-scale energy storage. Unlike the lithium-ion batteries in your phone, flow batteries store energy in liquid electrolytes that flow through the system. This design allows them to store massive amounts of energy for long periods, making them ideal for stabilizing electrical grids.

However, making these batteries practical requires finding the right chemical compounds that are stable, efficient, and cost effective. This article describes collaborative research that includes teams led by RASEI Fellow Mike Toney and former RASEI Fellow Mike Marshak. The teams were exploring the optimization of chromium-based compounds as charge carriers. The aim was that by changing the structure of the organic chelate ligand that surrounds the chromium atom, they could better understand the relationship between structure and performance and use that understanding to design more efficient systems.

Two very similar chromium compounds were prepared; CrPDTA and CrPDTA-OH, which differ only by the addition of a single hydroxyl group (-OH) on the organic framework. Hydroxy groups are often added to compounds to improve their solubility in water, but in this case the team observed a drop in the performance of the molecule. The hydroxylated compound showed:

Slower reaction rates – The CrPDTA-OH transferred electrons 100 times more slowly than the non-hydroxylated.
Reduced efficiency – battery efficiency dropped from 99.3% to 98.2%.
Increased hydrogen gas production – more energy was wasted producing unwanted hydrogen gas in a side reaction instead of being stored.

It’s kind of like if some of the cars had one flat tire. They are going to be worse at transporting charge back and forth, and they might do things you don’t want them to.

Using a suite of advanced characterization techniques the team discovered that the addition of the hydroxyl group caused a distortion of the molecular shape around the central chromium ion. This distorted shape weakened the bonds between the metal atom and the organic chelate ligand, which reduced the efficiency of electron transfer.

This research reveals a fundamental principle for designing redox flow battery materials: molecular geometry matters immensely. The chromium atom needs to adopt an octahedral arrangement to work efficiently. Any distortion of this shape leads to reduced performance. This study also confirms why maintaining the precise structure is so important. It prevents water molecules from interfering with the chromium atom, which would cause the unwanted production of hydrogen gas instead of energy storage.

Researchers Discover The Hidden ‘Dance’ Of Ions That Could Inform The Design Of Grid-Scale Energy Storage

Read the article here

Insights into the processes of charge movement in the electrolyte could inform future battery design

The electrolyte of the battery is the highway that connects the two parking lots together. This research that brings together an international collaborative team, including researchers from three US universities, three National labs, and researchers from the United Kingdom and Switzerland, and RASEI Fellow Mike Toney, reveals important features of this highway in zinc-ion based batteries.

While most people are familiar with lithium-ion batteries in their phones and devices, zinc-ion batteries offer compelling advantages for large-scale electricity storage. Zinc is more abundant and thus affordable, zinc-ion batteries use water-based electrolytes that are much less likely to overheat or explode, Zinc-ion batteries can pack a lot of energy into a small space, they are very energy dense.

The electrolyte is the media through which the charged ions pass through during charge and discharge cycles. In our metaphor the electrolyte is the highway on which the cars travel back and forth. The properties of the electrolyte can dictate a number of features of the batteries performance, how fast it charges, how long it lasts, and how much energy it can store. This research has explored how these ions, or ‘cars’, act during transport, and they have observed that it is not plain driving, the ions cluster and form convoys as they move through the electrolyte. The way the zinc sulfate ions travel is far more dynamic and complex than previously understood.

Using advanced x-ray techniques in combination with advanced computer modeling the team were able to explore the molecular structure of the electrolyte at different stages of the charge / discharge cycle. They found that the ions don’t just float around independently, instead they form clusters, like cars forming a convoy. It was observed that the zinc ions surround themselves with exactly six water molecules and clusters formed in a range of sizes, from just 2 ions all the way up to 22 ions.

You might expect that they clusters would move more slowly, like a traffic jam on the highway, but the team found that while the clusters do reduce conductivity, the battery still works. Critical to this is the timing of the clusters. The clusters are incredibly short lived, existing for only picoseconds (trillionths of a second) at a time. Instead of having a traffic jam, it is like having really busy traffic that is moving so fast that it is constantly reorganizing itself and so it never actually gets stuck.

This offers insights that can be applied in future battery designs; Ions form diverse, temporary partnerships that vary in size and composition, the system is constantly undergoing reorganization, transport happens both through vehicular motion (cars moving through the highway), and hopping between clusters (it would be like someone jumping from car to car in an action movie). These insights could improve future electrolyte design which could improve battery performance and potentially open the door to new battery chemistries that could be used for a broader range of applications, such as grid-scale storage.

By developing a more informed understanding of how charge is transported in electrolytes we can improve our designs in the future. Instead of trying to avoid cluster, we can harness it to improve the efficiency of charge transport in battery technologies.

Inside the battery: X-Ray Vision Reveals How Sodium Really Moves and Stores Energy

Read the article here

Sodium-ion batteries have the potential to be game changers for grid-scale storage with their abundance, low cost, and sustainability advantages over existing lithium-ion technologies. A key hurdle in their development is that we don’t yet fully understand how sodium actually moves and stores energy on the molecular level. This international collaboration, led by RASEI Fellow Mike Toney, uses cutting-edge X-ray techniques and computational modeling, provides insight into these promising battery chemistries.

Sustainable battery technologies are central to the modern power grid and meeting the growing demand of electrification technologies, such as electric vehicles. Among the growing array of battery chemistries Sodium-Ion Batteries (NIBs) address many of the challenges associated with lithium-ion batteries, and can even benefit from the work done to bring lithium-ion technologies to scale. This is swapping out the cars in our analogy from lithium-ions to more affordable sodium-ions. Sodium is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, making it dramatically more affordable and sustainable than lithium. While NIBs don’t yet match the energy density of lithium-ion based designs, they are ideal for grid storage applications where space is less constrained, but cost and sustainability matter enormously. Furthermore, NIBs can be produced using lithium-ion manufacturing facilities, enabling rapid deployment without the associated infrastructure costs.

The main hurdle has been developing anode materials that efficiently store and release sodium ions. Hard carbon shows promise but understanding exactly how sodium storage works at the molecular level remained elusive—a critical gap for large-scale manufacturing.

This research uses a combination of advanced X-ray spectroscopy techniques and computational modeling to peer inside the electrodes of a working NIB to watch the storage process unfold in real-time. Put simply they explored the details of a three step system where sodium ions first attach to surface defects in the hard carbon, then squeeze between the carbon layers, and finally cluster into the pores of the anode, providing insights and a road map for the design of NIBs in the future.

To gain more information about the details of these processes the team using X-ray total scattering, a technique that bounces high-energy X-rays off atoms and analyzes the scattered pattern to map exactly where atoms are positioned relative to each other. Think of it like echolocation to see in the dark, but for atomic structures! By taking a series of ‘snapshots’ of the NIBs at different stages of charging, the researchers could track how sodium atoms moved and arranged themselves during the process. The X-ray data reveals amazing levels of detail, revealing distinct signatures for different types of sodium storage, distinguishing between sodium atoms stuck to the surface defects of the hard carbon and those squeezed between carbon sheets, and those atoms clustered in pores.

Through a combination of these experimental results and advanced computational modeling the team were able to piece together a three-stage sequence to better understand the movement of sodium ions during charging. First, the sodium ions target high-energy defect sites on the hard carbon surfaces, like easy to access parking spots with the strongest attraction. In the second stage, as the prime parking spots fill up, sodium begins what the researchers call “defect-assisted intercalation’, where the defects are used as entry points to slip between the carbon layer (like cars going to other levels of a multistory parking lot), causing the carbon layers to expand slightly. In the third stage, in the low-voltage plateau region, sodium continues to intercalating between the layers, while also filling up the nanoscale pores and forming metallic clusters. Crucially the evidence from the X-ray analysis shows that the size of these clusters is dependent on the pore size – larger pores in the carbon processed at higher temperatures produced bigger sodium clusters, directly linking the battery’s microstructure to its storage capacity.

This molecular-level understanding has the potential to transform NIB development from educated guesswork into precision engineering. Guided by this three stage roadmap, battery researchers can now strategically design hard carbon materials, altering defect concentrations to optimize initial storage, controlling pore sizes to maximize capacity, while balancing these factors to minimize the irreversible trapping that reduces overall battery lifetimes. The combined X-ray spectroscopy and computational modeling technique demonstrated in this research has the potential to provide a powerful new toolkit for studying other battery chemistries in the future. By revealing more about how sodium energy storage works, this research brings us closer to sustainable solutions for grid-scale energy storage, a critical piece in the puzzle for a modern, resilient, and sustainable energy economy.

August 2025

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New report evaluates how we can use energy better in buildings at a community scale

Daniel Morton — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 18:05:45 +0000

New report evaluates how we can use energy better in buildings at a community scale Daniel Morton Thu, 08/07/2025 - 12:05

Daniel Morton

RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze is a co-author and co-editor on a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) Energy in Buildings and Communities Programme (EBC), evaluating the approaches aiming to use energy more efficiently in buildings and districts.

Tell me more!

Read the Report

Decarbonization of the electricity grid and the electrification of transport, heat, and industry related energy consumption are at the heart of many governments’ policies to reach ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The energy consumed by buildings, in building them and regulating the temperature in them, account for about 35 % of global energy use. The integration of variable renewable energy sources into power grids and the growing electricity demand reinforce the need for energy flexibility, a key approach to improve energy savings. Buildings should be able to adapt. Adapt to weather conditions, to their users’ needs, and to the requirements of the energy grid.

This report, that brings together nineteen international experts from across the globe, including RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze, (who was also one of four co-editors), summarizes years of working reviewing the state-of-the-art methodologies for the evaluation of energy flexibility at the building cluster level. While there are technologies to provide energy flexibility at a single building level (such as smart thermostats), this work looks at harnessing savings at a larger scale, aggregating control at scales of multiple houses, buildings, even neighborhoods and towns. Energy flexibility on a community scale is the ability of a group of buildings, such as a neighborhood, an office complex, or a campus, to coordinate when and how they use electricity. Instead of each building operating independently, they work together in a coordinated fashion to shift their energy consumption to time when electricity is cheaper, more abundant, and cleaner. For example, on a day where it is forecast to be hot in the afternoon, everyone might want air conditioning. A flexible building cluster might pre-cool some buildings in the morning when more energy is available, stagger when different buildings ramp up their cooling systems, and use stored energy or on-site solar panels during peak demand hours. By coordinating amongst buildings the power supply can be balanced with the demands across the grid, while comfort for the building occupants can be maintained.

The report highlights that energy flexibility at this level remains a challenge, both in terms of technical challenges and hesitancy in adoption. These are challenges that are being solved. The report highlights innovations that address the technical needs and strategies that are being used to enhance adoption.

As we move to a modern power grid, the energy needs of the building sector will continue to be a challenge. This report contributes to the development of energy flexibility on an community scale, summarizing the technical and practical applications of energy flexibility. This review classifies and addresses four critical areas to systematically understand energy resilience (1. Defining energy resilience; 2. Understanding relevant disruptions; 3. Quantifying resilience and 4. Improving overall resilience), and identifies four main research gaps (1. Lack if a universal definition; 2. Understanding disruptions; 3. Evaluation metrics and 4. improvement strategies). The report then goes on to describe the development of energy flexibility characterization methods to an adaptive method, demonstrated through two case studies, and how these types of methods illustrate building-grid interactions. To move this forward the report also presents an open-source, community driven tool for forecast creation and evaluation. The power of this tool is demonstrated in a collaborative exercise involving 10 research teams worldwide. The results show significant promise, with the authors suggesting that more demonstrations of this approach across a broad range of systems will validate this approach and make it more robust.

While technical challenges remain, this report shows that the building blocks for community-scale energy coordination and flexibility are falling into place. The next step is moving this into more real-world scenarios. Using the technologies that have been developed in actual neighborhoods and communities to prove their effectiveness across different systems, environments and at scale.

August 2025

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Professor Kim See joins RASEI

Daniel Morton — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 22:12:09 +0000

Professor Kim See joins RASEI Daniel Morton Wed, 08/06/2025 - 16:12

Daniel Morton

Effective and sustainable energy storage is critical to a modern and resilient power grid. Independent of how electricity is generated, the ability to flexibly store and supply electricity strengthens the grid. Batteries are a key component of these storage technologies; they are responsive at the flick of a switch and in some cases can free up precious resources such as water.

The Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) and the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE) are excited to announce that Professor Kimberly See, from the California Institute of Technology, will be joining the faculty of the �鶹��Ѱ�� as a RASEI Fellow with an appointment in ChBE in August of 2026. Professor See is a leading materials scientist who is developing innovative ways to enhance the performance of tomorrows sustainable batteries.

The path to a resilient and sustainable energy economy runs directly through better batteries. Today’s power grid demands storage solutions that are more efficient, built from materials that are abundant, affordable, and environmentally responsible. This intersection of performance and sustainability is one of the most exciting frontiers in energy research, where materials science discoveries can directly impact our current, and future, energy economies.

Battery storage offers exceptional flexibility to a modern power grid, providing rapid response capabilities that can balance supply and demand within seconds rather than minutes or hours. The extensive storage requirements of our grid necessitate a diverse range of solutions, including hydropower storage. However, as water becomes more precious there is increasing competition between energy storage needs and other critical uses like drinking water and agriculture. Futhermore, hydropower also requires specific geographic features (you can’t put dams anywhere and everywhere) and massive infrastructure investments. Thus, battery systems which can be deployed essentially anywhere, from urban centers to remote locations, create opportunities for more resilient and distributed grids.

The See Group has been successfully exploring the performance of batteries and electrochemical devices and processes from a materials science perspective for over a decade now.

At its core, battery performance is fundamentally a materials challenge – how atoms arrange, how electrons move, and how ions travel through carefully engineered structures. Materials science research provides the opportunity to design battery components at the molecular level to achieve faster charging, longer lifespans, and higher energy densities, features that are going to be critical as we scale up our grid level storage needs.

Tell me more!

The See Group

Recent Solid State Redox Chemistry Paper

Recent Solid State Ionics Paper

Recent Electrode Energy Density Paper

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RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze Honored as a member of the 2025 IBPSA Fellows Class

Daniel Morton — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 20:18:14 +0000

RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze Honored as a member of the 2025 IBPSA Fellows Class Daniel Morton Mon, 08/04/2025 - 14:18

Daniel Morton

The International Building Performance Simulation Association, or IBPSA, was founded to advance and promote the science of building performance simulation in order to improve the construction, operation, and maintenance of new and existing buildings worldwide. Building performance simulation uses detailed computer models to evaluate how buildings perform under varying conditions, in terms of energy efficiency, carbon footprint, and heating and cooling efficiency.

Every two years the IBPSA inducts a cohort of Fellows, recognizing those individuals who have attained distinction in the field of building performance simulation by either the teaching of major course or by way of research, simulation code development, or the application of building simulation on projects of significant scope.

This year RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze was named as part of the 2025 Fellows class, one of the highest honors in this field. Henze was selected for his pioneering work in model predictive control, which uses mathematical models to predict building system behavior and optimize energy use and comfort; simulation model development, which involves creating and improving mathematical models to explore how buildings respond to factors like weather, utility price signals or occupancy; and building-to-grid integration, which connects buildings to the power grid so the former can respond to electric grid system needs, such as reducing usage during peak times. He is also recognized for his international leadership in research and education.

Gregor is a widely recognized international leader in this field, with recent research sabbaticals in Spain and Australia, and leading educational collaborations with partners in Italy. With more than 200 peer-reviewed publications across topics including advanced building control, data science for energy and buildings, energy flexibility and novel district heating and cooling networks, Gregor has made varied contributions to the field. This innovation is also being translated to applications, Henze is the co-founder and chief scientist at QCoefficient, Inc., and co-founder of Whisper Energy, startups that explore different aspects of technologies that help buildings proactively manage their energy use in real time.

Congratulations Gregor! The induction into the 2025 Fellows class will be formally recognized in August 2025 at the Building Simulation 2025 Conference in Brisbane, Australia.

August 2025

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2025 BEaRS Workshop

Daniel Morton — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 22:38:29 +0000

2025 BEaRS Workshop Daniel Morton Mon, 07/21/2025 - 16:38

Daniel Morton

The 2025 BEaRS Workshop brought together researchers from across the front range (and beyond, with our guests from Japan) to participate in cross-cutting interdisciplinary discussion focused on energy and resilience.

This inaugural Boulder Energy and Resilient Sustainability (BEaRS) workshop brought together scientists from across a range of disciplines, from the social sciences to fundamental physics, from buildings and control to electronics and computing, all discussing how we can better use energy to develop a more resilient future.

The program for the three-day workshop was made up from seven session, with topics including sustainability and the built environment, active matter and chiral materials, building energy technologies, energy systems and the economics of renewable integration, energy policy, grid optimization and energy efficient computing. We welcomed guests from across the Front Range, from Golden to Fort Collins, and further afield, with collaborators from the WPI-SKCM2, based at Hiroshima University.

The program was designed to include a range of speakers, from invited plenary speakers to student researchers, the aim was to provide opportunities for connection and discussion and to seed cross-disciplinary ideas. The plenary speakers really set the tone for each of the days, striking notes of optimism and encouragement, while also instilling urgency and impatience for change.

Amory Lovins, a co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, joined us from Stanford to present on how integrative design can be used to enhance efficiencies and drive down costs in buildings, everything from the house Amory lives in, to factories for Intel. Using this design principles for today’s technologies can have significant lasting impact in reducing energy use. We have the technology, and we know how to design for it.

Chuck Kutscher, who has spent decades at the cutting-edge of renewable energy research at NREL and now as a RASEI Fellow, gave an overview talk on the clean energy transition with a focus on air pollution and human health. Chuck highlighted all the ways in which we can drive down air pollution as we move to cleaner energy and the impacts, both on human health and societal economics that these changes would make. Central to this change is the drive toward electrification, it will provide cheaper electricity that will significantly reduce the impact on human health.

Ian Lange, an economist from the Colorado School of Mines, an expert in global mineral policy, gave an insightful overview of the status of the global mineral market and provided perspectives on how to think about and understand this industry. The knowledge imparted, both on how to think about the minerals in the soil, and some of the factors that are real drivers in this discussion provided a great way to better understand this important market for technology.

Thank you to everyone who was able to attend and participate in the lively questions, panels, and discussion. The opportunity to spend time with experts from a wide range of fields and approach current ideas from new perspectives is extremely valuable and a great opportunity to explore some of the intersectional ways in which disparate fields can work together.

The workshop was capped off with some of the workshop participants, after a busy three days, finding the motivation to hike up Bear Peak on Saturday morning,

July 2025

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Collaborative Research explores new approaches to the development of bio-plastics

Daniel Morton — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 23:05:55 +0000

Collaborative Research explores new approaches to the development of bio-plastics Daniel Morton Thu, 06/26/2025 - 17:05

Daniel Morton

In an inter-institute collaboration RASEI Fellow Merritt Turetsky teams up with Carson Bruns from ATLAS to explore a productive way to deal with the plastic waste problem. Awarded a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder 2025 Research & Innovation Seed Grant, the team are excited to get started!

Plastics are a huge problem. Plastic waste can now be found at the bottom of the deepest ocean and on top of the tallest mountains, and the environmental and health impacts are only starting to be understood. In 2024 the world generated an estimated 240 million tons of plastic waste, of which less than 10% was recycled, the rest going to landfill, or worse, polluting the environment. That is the equivalent of 50 million elephants.

One of the key reasons for the difficulty in recycling plastics is that they are made from petroleum and don’t easily breakdown in nature. Plastics can be made from bio-based feedstocks, but adoption has been slow. There are a number of reasons for this, including low stability, cost, and ability to compost. This research from the Bruns and Turretsky team aims to change that. This work, that will be primarily based in Bruns’ Emergent Nanotechnology Lab will be focused on turning agricultural materials into bio-based plastics that are strong enough for their applications, but can be readily recycled, more easily composted, or even used as a fertilizer.

The Turetsky lab specializes in exploring and understanding ecosystems, in particular northern ecosystems, looking at permafrost degradation and how this impacts the environment and communities. What is her team doing investigating polymers? They are more at home looking at boglands and moss!

One of the hurdles in figuring out how well a bio-plastic degrades is getting good conditions for composting. It is hard to characterize the biodegradability of the bio-plastics under accurate conditions. That is where the Turetsky lab plugs in to this project. Working with the Bruns team the Turetsky group are developing systems to more accurately investigate and characterize the biodegradability of the new bio-plastics being developed.

Excited to see the results of this developing collaboration!

June 2025

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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

Show me more!

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), �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder 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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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, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder), Seth Marder (Chemistry and Chemical & Biological Engineering, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder), Stephen Barlow (RASEI, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder) 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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2025 Right Here, Right Now Global Summit

Daniel Morton — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 22:52:54 +0000

2025 Right Here, Right Now Global Summit Daniel Morton Fri, 06/13/2025 - 16:52

Daniel Morton

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2022 RHRN Summit

2025 RHRN Summit

2025 �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Session

2025 �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Today Article

In December of 2022 �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder was the host for inaugural Right Here, Right Now United Nations Human Rights Global Summit, the organization of which engaged a number of RASEI fellows.

In 2025, the second Right Here, Right Now Global Summit was hosted by the University of Oxford. To highlight the global nature of the challenges faced a 24 hour global plenary session was undertaken. The cornerstone of the summit, this hybrid global event brought together leading thinkers and practitioners at the intersection of climate change and human rights. This session was broadcast live across all timezones. Co-created by Universities across the world, the plenary followed the sun as the baton was passed between different regions.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder hosted a live session starting on June 5, 2025 at 9 AM MT. The session featured a keynote address from Sheila Watt-Cloutier and a panel discussion on pollution, water insecurity and human migration with �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder students John Edem Ecklu, Naia Zulueta, and �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Associate Professor Amanda Carrico. Introductory remarks were made by Tonni Brodber and the sessions were moderated by NPR’s Lakshmi Singh.

The panel discussion brought together a range of perspectives and brought the audience into the discussion. The keynote highlighted the long-term commitment of Watt-Cloutier to appealing to the human side of climate change and the importance of how this impacts not only her community but everyone. Watt-Cloutier stated that she believes that one of the most important things we can be doing is educating people about the human impacts of climate change, that this can be an effective way to bring people together, even in times of political uncertainty and conflict.

“We are all in this together, as a common humanity,” Watt-Cloutier said. She described the Arctic as a sentinel for climate change and urged others to rediscover their bonds with the land. “In the Arctic, we just absolutely love our land, and indigenous peoples around the world are the same. We love nature because of what it gives us, and the love allows us to be stronger in our fight to defend our way of life”

“Do things that bring you back to nature and you will start to protect what you love”

June 2025

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Understanding light-driven production of hydrogen could unlock future insights for harnessing light for chemistry

Daniel Morton — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 16:27:04 +0000

Understanding light-driven production of hydrogen could unlock future insights for harnessing light for chemistry Daniel Morton Mon, 06/09/2025 - 10:27

Daniel Morton

Light to fuel: clean hydrogen production. Improved understanding of the light-driven production of hydrogen holds the promise not just to make the reaction more efficient in producing a fuel, but also to offer a framework to better understand future light-driven chemistries.

Many chemical reactions require the input of energy to activate the transformation. This can often be in the form of heat, or chemical energy. One of the most efficient ways of introducing energy into a reaction is by using light. If you don’t have to heat up a reaction, or add extra chemicals to it, and instead shine a light on it, you can save significant energy. However, it can be difficult to control and optimize light-driven reactions. This research, just published in Chem, is a collaboration between the Dukovic Group at the �鶹��Ѱ�� (�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder) and the King Group at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and provides a holistic understanding of the light-driven production of hydrogen gas using a nanocrystal-enzyme complex as the catalyst, and a computational framework that can be used more generally to understand other light-driven chemical reactions in the future. The code for this model is being made available in the supplementary documents of this article.

Chemical catalysis is a special type of reaction, one that increases the speed of a transformation and often reduces the amount of waste produced by the process. Think of it like an assembly line. The catalyst is like a station on the line, bringing together two or more components to create a new product that is then passed along. Without the catalyst the components might, by chance, bump together and form the desired product, but it will be much slower, and much less frequent. The catalyst remains unchanged in the process and can repeat the transformation many times.

Enzymes are Nature’s catalysts. On the cellular level, whenever a change needs to happen, an enzyme is usually involved. The speed of an enzyme, and its selectivity, that is its ability to only react with the desired molecules out of the soup of molecules present in a typical cell, is fantastic. Enzymes are often superior to catalysts we can make in a lab, and as such, much research has gone into finding ways to harness such enzymes to do reactions for us in the lab. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as just grabbing some enzyme out of a cell. Enzymes often require specific environments and partners to react with.

Redox enzymes are a special, and particularly attractive, class of enzymes. They are capable of adding, or removing, an electron from a chemical reaction, a key step in the production of hydrogen gas. Redox enzymes rarely exist by themselves. Returning to the assembly line analogy, to get a station that can add the electrons to the protons (H⁺) to make hydrogen gas, many other stations need to be added before in a specific order. In a cell there is a chain of enzymes that pass the electrons along before the reaction can take place.

This is where the artificial component comes in. The nanocrystal, which, when exposed to light, releases an electron, replaces the long chain of enzymes and can directly transfer an electron to the enzyme. So, you reduce your assembly line down from a chain of many stations to just two. “This work was really only possible through collaboration” explains Gordana Dukovic, the lead researcher at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. “The team at NREL have vast expertise in hydrogenase (the redox enzyme that creates hydrogen gas), and we have the expertise in making and tailoring the nanocrystals and studying what they do after they absorb light”. Getting the enzyme to work with the artificial electron donor took some work.

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Characterization of Photochemical Processes

Electron Transfer Kinetics

Competition between electron transfer processes

Activation Thermodynamics

Role of Surface-Capping Ligands

Quantum Efficiency of Charge Transfer

2020 Review of this research area

The two teams first started working together in 2011 and have invested a great deal of work in understanding many aspects of this nanocrystal-enzyme hybrid. “Working with the team at NREL has been really amazing” says Dukovic, “the opportunity to work with experts who really help you ask the important questions, and identify where our assumptions were wrong, was essential for this work.” For over more than a decade this collaboration has interrogated the different steps of this process, such as how the nanocrystal and enzyme fit together, how the nanocrystal generates an electron when exposed to light, how the nanocrystal transfers the electron to the enzyme, and how the enzyme uses those electrons to make hydrogen. It is only through building this comprehensive understanding of the steps that underpin this reaction that the team are in the position to provide a holistic picture of the whole transformation. Furthermore, the framework that they have built is robust enough to be applied in improving other light-driven reactions in the future.

This work describes an improved assembly line capable of converting light energy into hydrogen gas, a clean burning fuel that provides new, more efficient ways, to generate electricity. Perhaps more excitingly, it demonstrates the power of a new computational model and framework, built on over a decade of collaborative research, which has been made freely available, that provides insights into light-driven reactions and can be used by the scientific community to refine and optimize future light-driven chemistry. Helena Keller, the lead author is enthusiastic about the next steps “We are in a really exciting place now, where the capabilities of using computational methods to understand complex systems like this are becoming more and more accessible. The better we understand how to control processes at the smallest scales – like at the level of individual electron transfers – the closer we get to revolutionizing the way we produce energy and materials for the good of the world”.

June 2025

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