Edward Gillan
University of Iowa, IA·Chemistry
Turning cheap, abundant raw materials into useful fuels and chemicals usually needs a catalyst, a material that speeds up a reaction without being consumed. Two reactions matter a great deal: splitting water to make hydrogen fuel, and converting nitrogen gas from the air into ammonia for fertilizer.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
metal borides
earth-abundant metals
electrocatalysis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Identify the factors that control composition and crystal structure when highly exothermic, seconds-long thermochemical reactions form crystalline metal borides of earth-abundant 3d and 4d metals in a transient molten salt flux.
- Target boron-rich boride structures containing direct boron–boron bonds, and characterize the resulting crystalline materials and intimately mixed composites as chemically robust electrical conductors.
- Test the metal borides as electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction, which converts water to hydrogen, and for the more difficult reduction of nitrogen to ammonia.
- Probe molecule–surface bonding on boride catalysts with spectroscopic and microscopic experiments paired with theoretical calculations of surface energetics, to identify intermediates in water and nitrogen reduction.
More about the research
Both normally rely on scarce precious metals. This project develops fast, flexible ways to make metal borides, hard compounds of a metal with boron, from earth-abundant metals, and tests them as electrocatalysts that drive these reactions with electricity.
Why it matters
Hydrogen fuel and ammonia fertilizer are made today with energy-intensive processes and scarce precious-metal catalysts. Catalysts built from earth-abundant metals and boron could make these conversions cheaper and more energy efficient, supporting energy security and advanced manufacturing. The rapid synthesis routes and surface-level understanding developed here may also transfer to other materials and catalytic systems.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Karthish Manthiram
California Institute of Technology, CA·Chemistry
Test the hypothesis that breaking the nitrogen triple bond at a titanium(II) catalyst center is the rate-determining step in electrochemical ammonia synthesis driven by alkali metal electron donors.
Matthew Whited
Carleton College, MN·Chemistry
Develop late-metal complexes with metal–silicon single and multiple bonds that transfer reactive nitrene and carbene groups (short-lived nitrogen and carbon fragments) onto organic substrates.
Vignesh Sundaresan
University of Mississippi, MS·Chemistry·Early-career
Fabricate monolithic nanopore electrode arrays with precisely defined pore size and interconnectivity to test how nanoscale confinement and mass transport govern the efficiency and product selectivity of hydrogen evolution and carbon dioxide reduction.
The school
University of Iowa: 32 labs on PI Pages, $703M a year on research, 418 research doctorates a year.
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