Month: November 2015

Materials chemist Shannon Boettcher and his lab are investigating ways to use non-carbon-based (i.e. “inorganic”) materials – like the semiconductors found in a computer or cell phone – to convert and store energy sustainably and in a cost-effective fashion. This research contributes to what Boettcher predicts will be a dramatic shift in energy technologies necessary to prevent substantial climate change. Currently, he and his colleagues are studying fundamental and practical aspects of the production of chemical fuels using water, sunlight and/or electricity. The stable chemical fuels they create, such as hydrogen gas (H₂), can be easily stored and later used in fuel cells or burned like natural gas – a potentially much less expensive way to store energy than batteries.

In 2014 Boettcher and his (now former) graduate student Lena Trotochaud discovered that iron impurities in common materials were critical in the process that splits water molecules to make H₂ and O₂. Boettcher says, “We figured out that this iron contamination was happening, and while there was evidence of this in the literature, it wasn’t well understood. Lena developed a simple way to get every bit of iron impurity out and showed that catalysts that scientists had thought were good became a thousand-fold worse when the trace iron impurities were removed.” Boettcher’s findings stirred so much interest that two of his papers were at one time ranked in the top 0.1% of most frequently cited papers in his field. “This is actually some of the simpler work that we’ve done,” he says, “but it’s having a huge impact because it’s changed the paradigm of how people look at these materials.”

Boettcher finds that the most exciting part of his work is collaborating with students and fellow researchers. He says it is “important for the public to understand that although universities do important basic research that has applications and eventually a big impact on society, the tremendous short term return is the students that go through the program, and go off and work in, for example, high-tech companies. They work on the teams that invent the next iPhone or an improved solar cell – we help develop their scientific and problem-solving skills they need to succeed throughout their career.” Given the potential for growth in the field of materials, and the importance of alternative energy research for sustainability and the reduction of carbon emissions, Boettcher says that materials science research is a “great thing to be involved in, and I have a lot of excellent students, because they realize that.”

Chemist David Johnson’s research revolves around the creation of new compounds with new properties, using a breakthrough “slice and dice” method that he developed. This method involves slicing molecular structures into slabs, and layering the slabs together. “We try to understand how [chemical compounds’] properties correlate with their structure,” Johnson says, “so we can make new materials that have enhanced properties.” Johnson is also known for his discovery of materials with the lowest thermal conductivity ever observed.
When asked about his work, however, Johnson says the “key thing is the students.” Through the Materials Science Institute, Johnson created the Industrial Internship Graduate degree program, which trains 70-80 students annually for corporate internships. In 2014, the program saw 100% of participants obtain internships that pay an average salary of $50,000 per year. Historically, more than 98% of the participants get internships and nine out of ten participants get job offers with the companies that they intern with.
In his laboratory, Johnson attempts to tailor each student’s tasks to prepare them for their chosen career path. He emphasizes independent problem-solving skills, in line with his belief that the area for growth in his field is applied science — science performed to contribute to fundamental understanding, that also might lead to creating practical, real-world solutions. His advice for students is to pursue a focus that they enjoy, with the knowledge that some hard work may be required along the way.

With their research, Darren Johnson and his lab seek to create solutions that prevent toxic waste and detect and remove contaminants from the environment. One of the biggest successes that emerged from the Johnson Lab began as a failure during a collaboration with the Haley lab. An experiment intended to create chloride sensors produced a sensor that was selective for nitrate instead of chloride. An effective nitrate sensor, however, has the potential to be highly useful in agriculture. “Over one percent of the world’s energy goes to making ammonium nitrate fertilizer,” Johnson says, “and 30% of that’s wasted and ends up as an environmental pollutant, but it’s also lost revenue for the farmers — in the U.S. that’s 2.5 billion dollars of wasted fertilizer.” Johnson, Michael Haley and their former graduate student Calden Carroll “pitched [the sensor] to a federal agency to form a start up company, and have now raised 1.3 million in funding.” Carroll now heads the company, which incorporated in 2012, employs three other UO alumni, and receives support from the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research Program, the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute and the Oregon Built Environment & Sustainable Technologies Center.

To foster business success stories like that of Carroll for other university students, Johnson and the CSMC partnered with ecosVC to implement their Lens of the Market Innovation Program. The Lens of the Market Program helps students make the transition from classrooms and university laboratories to professional life by helping them develop entrepreneurial skills. “If you have a really fundamental understanding of market analysis,” Johnson says, “it can really help science research. Chemists are problem solvers, we want to know important problems, and understanding the market can really help you pick good problems.”

For Johnson, the Lens of the Market Program is one of many features that make the University of Oregon’s Materials Science Institute stand out among its peers. In addition, he names the “student-focused” nature of the program, with an emphasis on “cross-disciplinary” training. “We compete [with other universities’ science programs] by being collaborative,” Johnson says, with “smaller groups and more collaborations between the groups. We compete with facilities, because our facilities are phenomenal for a department our size, and we don’t share them with a big engineering school, or a big medical school, and that’s a huge advantage we have. […] This is a really exciting time to be a Duck, in the sciences, moving forward.”