Department Seminar - Hang Ren

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.