EES Blog

EES Editorial Board members Joseph Hupp (Editorial Board Chair), Xinhe Bao, Linda Nazar, Jenny Nelson, and Jens Nørskov have been recognised as 2021 Clarivate^TM Highly Cited Researchers.

Joseph Hupp

Professor Joseph Hupp is a Morrison Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University and a Senior Science Fellow in the Materials Science Division at nearby Argonne National Laboratory. He is the Deputy Director of the Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center (ICDC), the team lead for “Redox Catalysts for Energy-Demanding Reactions” thrust within the Center for Light Energy Activated Redox Processes (LEAP), a DOE-sponsored EFRC and successor of the Argonne-Northwestern Solar Energy Research (ANSER) Center. Joe’s research centers on energy- and defense-relevant materials chemistry, including materials for chemical separations, chemical catalysis, light-to-electrical energy conversion, catalytic water oxidation, high-capacity storage and release of molecular hydrogen, and capture and destruction of chemical warfare agents.

Read his work in EES:

Evaluating topologically diverse metal–organic frameworks for cryo-adsorbed hydrogen storage

Energy Environ. Sci., 2016, 9, 3279-3289

https://doi.org/10.1039/C6EE02104B

A thermodynamic tank model for studying the effect of higher hydrocarbons on natural gas storage in metal–organic frameworks

Energy Environ. Sci., 2015, 8, 1501-1510

https://doi.org/10.1039/C5EE00808E

Xinhe Bao

Professor Xinhe Bao received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from Fudan University in 1987 and then worked as a Fellow of Alexander von Humboldt in Frize-Haber institute of Max-Planck Society in Berlin/Germany. He became a full Professor of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP, CAS) in China in 1995 and the group leader of Nano & Interface Catalysis at the State Key Laboratory of Catalysis later. He held the position of the institute director from 2000 to 2007, and was appointed the President of Shenyang Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2009. Bao is the member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the member of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) and the fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK). He is currently the vice President of Chemistry Society of China and the President of Chinese Society of Catalysis.

Read his work in EES:

Ionogel-based sodium ion micro-batteries with a 3D Na-ion diffusion mechanism enable ultrahigh rate capability

Energy Environ. Sci., 2020,13, 821-829

https://doi.org/10.1039/C9EE03219C

Highly efficient H₂ production from H₂S via a robust graphene-encapsulated metal catalyst

Energy Environ. Sci., 2020,13, 119-126

https://doi.org/10.1039/C9EE03231B

Linda Nazar

Professor Linda Nazar was educated at UBC and the University of Toronto where she received her Ph.D. degree in materials chemistry. She moved to Exxon Corporate Research to take up a Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 1987 she joined the Chemistry Department at the University of Waterloo, where she initiated her independent academic career. She was promoted to full professor in 2000 and established the Laboratory for Electrochemical Energy Materials.  She has been an invited professor at the IMN/Université de Nantes, the Materials Science department in UCLA, the CNRS in Grenoble, France; and at Caltech as a Moore Distinguished Scholar (Dept of Materials Science) in 2010. Dr. Nazar has achieved international recognition as a leader in the areas of solid state chemistry, electrochemistry, energy storage and materials science.

Read her work in EES:

Coulombically-stabilized oxygen hole polarons enable fully reversible oxygen redox

Energy Environ. Sci., 2021,14, 4858-4867

https://doi.org/10.1039/D1EE01037A

A new halospinel superionic conductor for high-voltage all solid state lithium batteries

Energy Environ. Sci., 2020,13, 2056-2063

https://doi.org/10.1039/D0EE01017K

Jenny Nelson

Professor Jenny Nelson is a Professor of Physics at Imperial College London, where she has researched novel varieties of material for use in solar cells since 1989. Her current research is focussed on understanding the properties of molecular semiconductor materials and their application to organic solar cells. This work combines fundamental electrical, spectroscopic and structural studies of molecular electronic materials with numerical modelling and device studies, with the aim of optimising the performance of solar cells based on molecular and hybrid materials. Since 2010 she has been working together with the Grantham Institute for Climate Change to explore the mitigation potential of photovoltaic, and other renewable, technologies. She has published over 200 articles in peer reviewed journals, several book chapters and a book on the physics of solar cells.

Read her work in EES:

Side-chain tuning in conjugated polymer photocatalysts for improved hydrogen production from water [OPEN ACCESS]

Energy Environ. Sci., 2020,13, 1843-1855

https://doi.org/10.1039/D0EE01213K

Design and evaluation of conjugated polymers with polar side chains as electrode materials for electrochemical energy storage in aqueous electrolytes [OPEN ACCESS]

Energy Environ. Sci., 2019,12, 1349-1357

https://doi.org/10.1039/C8EE03518K

Jens Nørskov

Professor Jens Nørskov is a Villum Kann Rasmussen Professor at Technical University of Denmark. He earned his PhD in theoretical physics from Aarhus University in Denmark in 1979, and is well known for his work on the theoretical description of surfaces, catalysis, materials and nanostructures. Nørskov’s research aims at developing theoretical methods and concepts to understand and predict properties of materials. The aim is to understand which surface properties determine their chemical activity and to use that insight, in combination with large-scale computations, to design new catalytic surfaces and nano-structures. Applications are primarily in energy transformations, including (photo-) electrochemical water splitting, CO2 reduction, nitrogen reduction and syngas reactions.

Read his work in EES:

Increasing stability, efficiency, and fundamental understanding of lithium-mediated electrochemical nitrogen reduction

Energy Environ. Sci., 2020,13, 4291-4300

https://doi.org/10.1039/D0EE02246B

Rapid flame doping of Co to WS₂ for efficient hydrogen evolution

Energy Environ. Sci., 2018,11, 2270-2277

https://doi.org/10.1039/C8EE01111G

Energy & Environmental Science were delighted to sponsor a poster prize at the Faraday Discussion on CO2 utilisation, which took place last month from 7th – 9th April 2021.

The EES Poster Prize was awarded to Laura Barberis (Utrecht University) for her poster titled ‘Particle size effects for Copper-catalysed CO2 hydrogenation to methanol’.

A Poster Prize was also awarded to Davide Salusso on behalf of the Faraday Division, for his poster entitled ‘Unveiling oxygen vacancy contribution to CO2 fixation to Dimethyl Carbonate over CeO2’

Congratulations Laura and Davide!

We are delighted to announce that the 2020 EES Lectureship has been jointly awarded to Professor Yana Vaynzof and Dr Wooyul Kim!

Established in 2019, the Lectureship recognises and supports those at an early stage of their independent career within the fields of energy and environmental sciences, and is a platform for early career researchers to showcase their research to the wider scientific community.

The recipients will each receive a £500 honorarium, will be given the opportunity to attend and present their research at a leading international online conference, and will be invited to contribute a Review-type article to EES.

Yana is an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany. Since 2019, she has been the Chair for Emerging Electronic Technologies at the Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden, and the Integrated Center for Applied Physics and Photonic Materials. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK in 2011, and was previously a junior professor at the University of Heidelberg, Germany (2014-2018).

Her research interests focus on emerging photovoltaics based on organic, colloidal quantum dot and perovskite materials. Her work aims to address the challenges of stability and reproducibility of emerging photovoltaic devices by identifying the causes and developing strategies for the mitigation of these challenges. To achieve this, Yana not only utilizes a broad range of experimental methods, but also develops new spectroscopic techniques and methodologies for the study of material physics of novel semiconductors.

Find out more about her research on her website https://cfaed.tu-dresden.de/cfeet-about and on twitter: @vaynzof

She was the only female recipient of an ERC Starting Grant in the panel PE3 Condensed Matter Physics in 2016, and was also the recipient of the 2018 Walter Kalkhof-Rose Memorial Award for outstanding young researchers in the natural sciences as well as the Fulbright-Cottrell Award for innovation in research and teaching.

Read her latest work in Royal Society of Chemistry journals:

Fractional deviations in precursor stoichiometry dictate the properties, performance and stability of perovskite photovoltaic devices
Paul Fassl, Vincent Lami, Alexandra Bausch, Zhiping Wang, Matthew T. Klug, Henry J. Snaith and Yana Vaynzof*
Energy Environ. Sci., 2018, 11, 3380-3391. DOI: 10.1039/C8EE01136B

Thermally evaporated methylammonium-free perovskite solar cells
Ran Ji, Zongbao Zhang, Changsoon Cho, Qingzhi An, Fabian Paulus, Martin Kroll, Markus Löffler, Frederik Nehm, Bernd Rellinghaus, Karl Leo* and Yana Vaynzof*
J. Mater. Chem. C, 2020,8, 7725-7733 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D0TC01550D

Wooyul has been an Assistant Professor at Sookmyung Women’s University, South Korea, working in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering since 2016. He received his PhD from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) in 2012, and went on to carry out postdoctoral research at Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, USA (2012-2016).

His recent research focuses on using time-resolved operando spectroscopy to investigate photo- (and electro-) catalytic mechanisms, including revealing key reaction intermediates, analysing samples used for water reduction and oxidation, and gaining a microscopic perspective of electrode surfaces in photoelectrochemical cells.

Find out more on his website http://sealab.or.kr/

Read his latest work in Energy & Environmental Science:
HOT article: Time-resolved observation of C–C coupling intermediates on Cu electrodes for selective electrochemical CO2 reduction
Younghye Kim,‡   Sojung Park, Seung-Jae Shin, Woong Choi, Byoung Koun Min, Hyungjun Kim, Wooyul Kim* and Yun Jeong Hwang*
Energy Environ. Sci., 2020, 13, 4301-4311. DOI: 10.1039/D0EE01690J

A highly active, robust photocatalyst heterogenized in discrete cages of metal–organic polyhedra for CO2 reduction
Featured on the inside front cover of the journal
Hyeon Shin Lee, Seohyeon Jee, Raekyung Kim, Hoang-Tran Bui, Bupmo Kim, Jung-Keun Kim, Kyo Sung Park, Wonyong Choi, Wooyul Kim* and Kyung Min Choi*
Energy Environ. Sci., 2020, 13, 519-526. DOI: 10.1039/C9EE02619C

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To celebrate, we have put together collections of Yana and Wooyul’s publications in Royal Society of Chemistry journals: