Department: Chemistry
Faculty Advisor: Alexandra Velian
Research Statement: Designing better, more energy-efficient catalysts is crucial for reducing worldwide energy consumption. Towards this goal, I am looking to create complex, atomically precise catalytic sites on the surface of material supports. This combines the stability and longevity of traditional material catalysts with the tunability and mechanistic insight associated with small molecule catalysts. My chosen support – black phosphorus – is ideal for this goal as it has an abundance of reactive electron lone pairs on its surface primed to form bonds. Currently, I am investigating the range of complexity accessible on the surface of black phosphorus via a newly discovered molecular tether.