Department Seminar - Hang Ren
Sep
4
2025
Description
The Department of Chemistry presents: Hang Ren
Title: Towards Directing Electrochemical Transformation at Nano-Interfaces
Location: WEL 2.122
Refreshments served at 3:15pm
In my third-year seminar, I described our efforts to learn from heterogeneity at electrochemical nano-interfaces through correlative electrochemical imaging. Since then, my group has advanced from observation to control, developing strategies to direct interfacial transport of solvents, solutes, and ions to guide electrochemical transformations at the nanoscale. In this seminar, I will highlight three vignettes. First, I will show how tailoring the local microenvironment can modulate interfacial electrocatalytic activity. Second, I will discuss how fluidic control within nanopipettes enables the manipulation of ion and solution motion, opening new opportunities for quantifying fast electrode kinetics and achieving controlled electrodeposition of nanoparticle libraries. Finally, I will present our recent studies of ion insertion reactions at the single-particle level, which reveal fundamental structure–function relationships inaccessible to ensemble measurements. Together, these efforts outline a framework for controlling chemistry at electrochemical nano-interfaces towards general principles for nanoscale electrochemical design for chemical transformations.