Funding
Funding for research in the BEST Lab comes from federal, foundation, and industrial sponsors. Recent funded project include:
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Ultrathin Sorbent Coatings with Bio-Inspired Multi-Ligand Binding Sites for Energy-Efficient Capture and Release of Carbon Dioxide – DARPA YFA23
- Principal Investigator: Joerg Werner
- Sponsor: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
- Topic: Multiscale material development for the efficient direct air capture and release of carbon dioxide
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Urban Air Pollution Monitoring
- Principal Investigator: Emily Ryan
- Co-Principal Investigators: Kevin Laine (BU School of Public Health), Jeff Geddes (Department of Earth and Environment)
- Sponsor: BU Campus Climate Lab
- Topic: Development of low cost, mobile air pollution sensor packs.
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NSF-BSF: Physical-Chemical Stabilization of Electrodeposition through Fundamental Interfacial Studies
- Principal Investigator: Emily Ryan
- Co-Principal Investigators: Daniel Sharon (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
- Sponsor: NSF Electrochemical Systems
- Topic: Computational-experimental investigation of electrodeposition stability for batteries.
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Exploring Wet Etching Reactions in Nanoconfinements
- Principal Investigator: Chuanhua Duan
- Co-Principal Investigators:
- Sponsor: Semiconductor Research Corporation
- Topic: Measure and understand wet etching reactions in nanoconfinements (WERIN) as well as to develop new strategies to improve the etching rate, specificity and uniformity of WERIN
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Engineering micro/nanostructures on gas-involving electrodes for high-efficiency clean energy production
- Principal Investigator: Chuanhua Duan
- Co-Principal Investigators: Ming-Chang LU (National Taiwan Univ.)
- Sponsor: Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan)
- Topic: Using micro/nanostructured surface to enhance gas/liquid transport on gas evolving electrodes
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Engineering and Evaluating the End-Group Assisted Electrodeposition of Conformal Polymer Electrolytes for Ultrathin-Film Batteries
- Principal Investigator: Joerg Werner
- Co-Principal Investigators: Keith Brown
- Sponsor: NSF Electrochemical Systems
- Topic: Development of solid polymer electrolytes with electrochemically crosslinkable end-groups to obtain conformal ultrathin electrode coatings. Research includes the development of a high throughput electrodeposition characterization system.
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Mapping Microscale Lithium Transport Dynamics Inside Architected Electrodes to Co-Optimize Battery Energy Density and Power Density
- Principal Investigator: Sean Lubner
- Co-Principal Investigators: Joerg Werner
- Sponsor: BU College of Engineering and Institute for Global Sustainability
- Topic: Probe and understand the rate-limiting mass transport phenomena in thick and architected low-tortuosity battery electrodes with thermal-wave imaging.
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Reversible Solid Oxide Fuel Cells and Electrolyzers
- Principal Investigator: Srikanth Gopalan
- Co-Principal Investigators: Uday Pal and Soumendra Basu
- Sponsor: DOE EERE
- Topic: Exploring reversible electrodes in solid oxide electrochemical cells for energy storage.
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Advanced Coatings for Energy Devices
- Principal Investigator: Soumendra Basu
- Co-Principal Investigators: Srikanth Gopalan, Uday Pal
- Sponsor: Nissan North America
- Topic: Protective coatings on porous substrates by AC Electrophoretic Deposition and Atomic Layer Deposition
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An Accelerated Workflow for the Discovery of Block Copolymer Conformal Thin Electrolyte Films
- Principal Investigator: Joerg Werner
- Co-Principal Investigators: Keith Brown
- Sponsor: Toyota Research Institute
- Topic: Evaluating high-throughput thin film deposition and characterization as a proxy for bulk solid battery electrolyte materials discovery.
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Production of Solar Quality Silicon by Model-Driven Molten Salt Electrolysis
- Principal Investigator: Uday Pal
- Co-Principal Investigators: WPI
- Sponsor: NSF CMMI
- Topic: New solar silicon production technology based on molten salt electrolysis
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Predicting the Stability of High Entropy Alloys Using High Throughput Density Functional Theory Calculations
- Principal Investigator: James Chapman
- Co-Principal Investigators: NA
- Sponsor: NSF ACCESS: Accelerate
- Amount: 2,500,000 core-hours
- Topic: Thermodynamic stability of HEA for NH3 catalyst materials
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Mesoscopic Modeling of Complex Chemical-Physical Processes at Interfaces
- Principal Investigator: Emily Ryan
- Co-Principal Investigators: NA
- Sponsor: NSF Electrochemical Systems
- Topic: Electrode-electrolyte interfaces in lithium batteries
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Collaborative Research: Integrated Biorefinery for Pyrolysis Biofuels and Biotemplated Nanomaterials
- Principal Investigator: Emily Ryan
- Co-Principal Investigators: Jillian Goldfarb (Cornell University)
- Sponsor: NSF Process Systems, Reaction Engineering and Molecular Thermodynamics
- Topic: Machine learning informed catalysts design for upgrading biofuels
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Systematic Design of Porous Heterogeneous Hierarchical Materials and Structures to Optimize Reactive Transport Processes
- Principal Investigator: Emily Ryan
- Co-Principal Investigators: Pirooz Vakili (BU), Jillian Goldfarb (Cornell University)
- Sponsor: NSF Design of Engineering Materials Systems
- Topic: Integrated computational-experimental-data science design paradigm for porous materials
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Electrocatalytic Activation and Cycling of Moisture-Swing Direct Air Capture Materials
- Principal Investigator: Emily Ryan
- Co-Principal Investigators: Gary Moore (Arizona State University), Matthew Green (Arizona State University)
- Sponsor: Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement, and The Sloan Foundation
- Topic: Novel material systems for direct air carbon capture
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Connecting Advanced High-Temperature X-ray and Raman Spectroscopy Structure/Dynamics Insights to High-Throughput Property Measurements
- Principal Investigator: Uday Pal
- Co-Principal Investigators:
- Sponsor: DOE
- Topic: Molten salts for sustainable processes