Chemistry Weekly Seminar - Kaiyang Tu
Kaiyang Tu, PhD Candidate, will present a seminar.
Title: Developing Time-resolved synchrotron infrared spectroscopy for Spectroelectrochemical measurement of Methanol oxidation
Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) has proven to be a powerful tool to study electrochemical processes under in-situ conditions due to its sensitivity to changes in chemical composition as well as changes in the arrangement of surface adsorbed molecules. Directly investigating fast electrochemical reactions with time-resolved FTIR however poses an interesting experimental challenge due to low quantities of analyte and need for highly focused IR-light near its diffraction limit.
Synchrotron infrared (SIR) and its high brilliance IR light offers significant advantages for in-situ FTIR electrochemistry compared to conventional infrared sources. This seminar will present continued progress in utilizing SIR to develop spectroelectrochemical platforms for time-resolved FTIR. Particular emphasis will be placed on development of a platform to study the kinetics of irreversible electrocatalytic reactions such as methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) on platinum with SIR and provide proof-of-principle for spatial mapping of electrocatalytic activity on heterogeneous PtNi electrode. Lastly the talk will highlight on-going challenges and progress towards the implementation of a surface sensitive FTIR platform with μs time resolution.