Tag : Electrochemistry

Chicago: A study conducted by chemists at the University of Chicago discovered a technique to use electricity to enhance a sort of chemical reaction commonly used in the synthesis of novel pharmaceutical medication candidates. The finding, which was published in Nature Catalysis, represents an advancement in the field of electrochemistry and indicates a road ahead to creating and directing reactions--and making them more sustainable. "What we want to do is understand what's happening at the fundamental level at the electrode interface, and use that to predict and design more efficient chemical reactions," said Anna Wuttig, UChicago Neubauer Family Assistant Professor and the senior author on the paper. "This is a step towards that eventual goal." In certain chemical reactions, electricity can boost the output--and because you can get the needed electricity from renewable sources, it could be part of making the worldwide chemical industry greener. But electrochemistry, as the field is known, is especially complex. There is much scientists don't know about molecular interactions, especially because you have to insert a conductive solid (an electrode) into the mix to provide electricity, which means the molecules interact with that electrode as well as with each other. To a scientist trying to untangle the roles each molecule is playing and in what order, this makes an already complicated process even more complicated. "What if you think about it as electrochemistry providing us with a unique design lever that's not possible in any other system?" she said. In this case, she and her team focused on the surface of the electrode that provides the electricity to the reaction. "There were hints that the surface itself is catalytic, that it pla ...