Funding

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

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

Sponsor: DOE

Topic: Molten salts for sustainable processes