Catalysis

RASEI Led team select to compete in the 2025 Lab Venture Challenge

Daniel Morton — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 16:02:11 +0000

RASEI Led team select to compete in the 2025 Lab Venture Challenge Daniel Morton Fri, 09/26/2025 - 10:02

September 2025

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Building Energizing Connections: Front Range Researchers Unite

Daniel Morton — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 16:33:38 +0000

Building Energizing Connections: Front Range Researchers Unite Daniel Morton Wed, 09/10/2025 - 10:33

Daniel Morton

This August (18-19, 2025), the Front Range came alive with scientific collaboration as the 2025 Front Range Electrochemistry Workshop (FREW) brought together over 100 researchers from across the region. Hosted at CU Boulder's Sustainability, Energy, and Environment Community (SEEC) building, this two-day gathering showcased the power of regional partnership in tackling some of our most pressing energy challenges. The workshop was funded by NSF’s Institute for Data Driven Dynamical Design.

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Front Range Electrochemistry Workshop

ChBE Highlight

What is Electrochemistry and Why Does It Matter?

Electrochemistry might sound complex, but it's essentially the science of using electricity to drive chemical reactions—and it's at the heart of our clean energy future. Think of the battery in your phone or car, the fuel cells powering some buses, or emerging technologies that can capture carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into useful materials. All of these rely on electrochemical processes that researchers are working to improve and expand.

Regional Collaboration

The Front Range is developing as a hub for this critical research. This workshop exemplified that spirit, bringing together researchers from Colorado School of Mines, CU Boulder, Colorado State University, the University of Wyoming, and several National Laboratories to share ideas, forge new partnerships, and identify opportunities for joint research.

"It was a really great meeting, with participants bringing an excited and motivated attitude that made for a really fantastic atmosphere," noted RASEI Fellow Mike Toney, who served on the organizing committee. The participants generated a great atmosphere at the workshop as researchers moved between presentations, interactive poster sessions, and innovative "collaboration pitch" sessions designed specifically to spark new partnerships, especially among graduate students. “The poster session was a great experience. I really enjoyed sharing my sodium-ion battery research and was exposed to a lot of fresh ideas across the electrochemistry space from other students and speakers” explained Loren Andrews, a Graduate Student at CU Boulder.

Tackling Real-World Challenges Together

The workshop covered a diverse range of applications that could transform how we store and use energy:

Advanced Battery Technologies: Improving today's lithium-ion batteries and developing next-generation alternatives, including solid-state batteries that could be safer and more efficient
Grid-Scale Energy Storage: Exploring redox flow batteries that could store renewable energy for entire communities
Clean Transportation: Advancing fuel cell technology for cars, trucks, and other applications
Sustainable Chemical Manufacturing: Developing electrochemical processes to catalyze chemical transformations
AI-Powered ��Ƶ18y: Using machine learning to accelerate the development of new materials and processes

Using Interactive Approaches to Develop Connections

What made this workshop particularly engaging was the opportunity to connect across different institutes along the Front Range region. The interactive format encouraged researchers to step out of their individual labs and think collectively about connected strengths and opportunities. Rather than just have lecture style presentations, the organizers developed a mixed schedule. The poster sessions weren't just about presenting results, they were also networking opportunities. The pitch sessions weren't just about sharing ideas, they were also about identifying concrete ways to work together.

To incentivize participation and develop some friendly competition in th poster and collaborative pitch sessions the organizers were able to offer a prize structure. For the poster session Abby Cardoza (Colorado School of Mines) won first place and Loren Andrews & Peter Romero (CU Boulder) won second place. For the Pitches a team with Cindy Wong (CU Boulder), Colby Evans (NIST), Emily Hansen (Colorado School of Mines), and Olajide Aijbade (University of Wyoming) took first place, and second place went to a team including Rebecca Beswick (CU Boulder), Peter Romero (CU Boulder), Bryce Rives (CU Boulder) Chris Sedmak (Colorado School of Mines), Matt Hammel (Colorado School of Mines). Congratulations to everyone!

Daniel Morton — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 16:34:22 +0000

Finding the On switch for more efficient light-driven chemistry Daniel Morton Mon, 07/07/2025 - 10:34

Daniel Morton

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Collaboration led by RASEI members Obadiah Reid and Garry Rumbles solves a long-standing puzzle in important organic chemical transformation.

In the world of organic chemistry, making new molecules, the building blocks for everything from advanced electronic materials to pharmaceuticals, is a bit like being a chef. Chemists are always looking to improve the recipe, to make it faster, cheaper, more efficient, and produce less waste. In recent years one of the most exciting new ‘cooking techniques’ is nickel photocatalysis, which uses abundant, low-cost nickel and the power of light to enable chemists to build complex molecules under mild conditions.

This technique has emerged as something of a game-changer in building molecules, but it comes with a significant puzzle. The nickel catalyst, as it is normally added to a reaction, is in a dormant state (called a ‘pre-catalyst’). To get the reaction moving, the catalyst needs to be ‘woken up’. For years, scientists were not sure what the wake-up call was. The activation from pre-catalyst to the functioning catalyst was something of a black box, with numerous theories for what was happening. This led to the assumption that each reaction was unique, and each reaction required its own individual and complicated startup sequence. This has often required a lot of work to find the right ‘On switch’.

This collaborative study, led by RASEI researchers Obadiah Reid and Garry Rumbles at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), brings together expertise from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory and Northeastern University. Together, the scientists have identified key features of the transformation from pre-catalyst to active catalyst. In the report, just published in Nature Communications, the team shows that there is a universal ‘On switch’ to start these powerful reactions, and the key to this transformation is light.

Imagine a high-tech machine delivered in a locked crate. You know that once you get it out and get it running, it can do amazing things, but you don’t have the key. For years, chemists were essentially trying to pick the lock in different ways every time they wanted to use it. This study describes a universal key for getting the crate open.

It was found that light, either directly, or transferred from another light-absorbing molecule, provide a jolt of energy that breaks a bond in the nickel pre-catalyst structure. This process, which is called photolysis, activates the nickel complex, getting it ready to do the chemistry. This initial step is something that has previously been proposed but never fully proven.

The team brought together a sophisticated array of tools to effectively investigate this mechanism, including incredibly fast laser systems that can watch chemical changes happen in fractions of a second. This allowed them to witness the ‘unlocking’ process in real-time and identify the exact sequence of events. They observed that after the initial light-induced bond breaking, the catalyst can then interact with molecules in the surrounding solvent, forming a temporary ‘reservoir’ that holds the catalyst in a state ready for the main reaction.

Building this body of evidence and developing these findings required a significant team effort, bringing together scientists from across the country, from multiple national labs and universities. RASEI Scientists at CU Boulder and NREL used advanced spectroscopy to track the catalyst’s behavior, while researchers at SLAC used high-powered X-rays to confirm changes in the structure of the nickel complex. This combination of knowledge and experience with cutting-edge instrumentation was essential in providing a complete understanding of these reactions begin.

Development of a unified explanation for how one of the most important tools in an organic chemist’s toolbox is initiated has important implications. Understanding this fundamental activation step allows chemists to move from guessing to designing. Not only does this support improvement in the activation of existing reactions, it also provides opportunities to design new transformations, all of which will streamline the manufacture of chemical commodities, such as pharmaceuticals and materials.

JULY 2025

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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), CU 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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