Funding

Funding for research in the BEST Lab comes from federal, foundation, and industrial sponsors. Recent funded project include:

• 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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

• 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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

• 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.

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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