Catalysis

Watching Carbon Capture in Action

Daniel Morton — Wed, 13 May 2026 21:00:48 +0000

Watching Carbon Capture in Action Daniel Morton Wed, 05/13/2026 - 15:00

Daniel Morton

Removing carbon dioxide (CO₂) directly from the air, a process called direct air capture (or DAC), is one of several approaches being developed to help reduce the concentration of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

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Among the methods being scaled up, one of the more established involves exposing air to a strongly alkaline liquid, typically a solution of potassium hydroxide (KOH), commonly known as lye. The liquid chemically binds the CO₂, converting it into dissolved salts called carbonates and bicarbonates. Large facilities using this principle are already operating or under construction, with one plant in Texas that is currently under construction, designed to remove 500,000 tons of CO₂ per year.

Despite the maturity of the underlying chemistry, there has been a fundamental limitation in how well researchers can study it. Until now, the process has been something of a black box. Scientists could measure what went into a capture system and what came out, but the detailed chemistry happening inside, specifically in the thin zone where the air and liquid meet, was very difficult to observe directly. This is a meaningful gap, because what happens in that zone determines how efficiently the system works, and how it should be designed, especially for novel DAC liquids. As Jason Pfeilsticker (a Graduate Student in the group of RASEI Fellow Wilson Smith, and lead researcher on this project), explains, “This really is a case of if you want to know about something, just look at, really carefully, and in this case there was some work to do before we could take a detailed look”.

Think of it like medicine before medical imaging. For centuries, doctors understood that the body had internal structures and processes, but could only examine them indirectly, through symptoms, pulses, and what came out of the body. The development of X-rays and later MRI scanning did not change human biology, but it transformed what could be understood and acted upon. A diagnosis that once required guesswork could suddenly be made based on the information gained from mapping out the internal structures of the body. This study, just published in ACS Energy Letters, represents a similar shift for CO₂ capture: rather than inferring what is happening at the gas-liquid interface from indirect measurements, researchers in the group led by Wilson Smith at the University of Colorado Boulder have built an instrument that lets them watch it directly.

The instrument at the center of this work is a custom-designed laboratory flow cell. This device was designed and built specifically for this purpose and, to the teams’ knowledge, is the only one of its kind. “There were so many different variables that we wanted to explore, but in order to design a better process and or screen novel DAC solvents, we needed to have a better picture of what was going on” explains Pfeilsticker, “You can change the solvent, the pressures, the flow, the reactor design, all of which affect the microenvironment and thus the DAC performance ”. To get a clearer picture they set out to build a flow cell with built in features that enabled accurate spatial mapping of the kinetics of the reaction, in real time. Designing and building it required solving a series of practical problems. The cell needed to bring CO₂ gas into contact with flowing KOH liquid through a porous membrane, closely mimicking the interface in a real capture system. It needed to be optically clear and stable enough to allow laser-based measurements without bubbles, vibrations, or chemical interference disrupting the readings. The flow inside needed to be smooth and predictable, what scientists call laminar flow, so that the measurements could be interpreted meaningfully. Each of these requirements shaped the final design, from the choice of materials to the geometry of the flow channels. However, this oversimplifies the actual process, these lessons were learned as part of an extensive prototyping process.

“We made at least 60 or 70 iterations of this cell during the project” explains Jason. “I was drawn to this project because I really like to make things, and this looked like a challenge that would use a great combination of scientific investigation, detailed design and hands-on building”. Jason, who spends much of his free time working on motorcycles, or building electronics and musical instruments, knew he was going to need to iterate on the cell design. Early on the team considered getting design iterations professionally machined. But each of these would cost thousands of dollars to produce, and when you are learning what is important as you are designing, a small tweak here and there can become very expensive. A typical filament-based 3D printer would not be suitable for working with the chemicals involved in DAC. “We identified a resin that was chemically compatible with the base reagents we were using, and we found a cheap resin 3D printer online, that let us do some initial proof-of-principle work, then we upgraded to a better 3D printer for the project, and now we could print iterations for less than a dollar,” said Jason. This not only made the process cheaper but sped-up design development as well. The team identified three big challenges as they worked through the designs: good seals, bubbles, and smooth flow of the liquid. The solutions for these came from a number of inspirations, including sealing mechanisms borrowed from drumheads, reactor geometry angles to reduce bubble formation to enable effective laser probing, shaping of the flow inlets and outlets to ensure laminar flow, and flow dampener design.

To explore the reaction and map out the kinetics of the process the team used a technique called confocal Raman spectroscopy to make their measurements. This works by shining a laser at a point in the liquid and reading the light that scatters back; different chemical species produce distinct signatures, making it possible to identify and quantify them. By scanning the laser across the cell in a grid pattern while the process was running, the team built up two-dimensional chemical maps, essentially pictures showing where carbonates and bicarbonates were forming and accumulating across the contact zone, at the scale of fractions of a millimeter, in real time.

What those maps revealed was not what simple intuition would predict. “We saw that the equilibrium reaction is in effect going backwards near the surface” explained Pfeilsticker. When fresh KOH first contacts CO₂, the highly reactive hydroxide ions in the liquid rapidly consume the incoming CO₂, converting it to carbonate near the membrane. But this rapid reaction locally depletes the hydroxide supply right at the interface. As the liquid flows further through the channel and more CO₂ is absorbed, there are fewer hydroxide ions available near the membrane to drive the reaction forward. “Because it is laminar flow, there is no turbulent mixing” said Jason. The result is that a thin layer of bicarbonate, an intermediate chemical species in the conversion process, forms immediately next to the membrane, nestled between the membrane surface and the main hydroxide and carbonate-rich zone further into the liquid. This pattern becomes more pronounced further along the flow channel and represents a direct, spatial record of the chemistry unfolding in real time.

The team also found that operating conditions matter. Higher flow rates altered the shape and extent of the reactive zone, and doubling the concentration of KOH shifted the balance of products and appeared to reduce the hydroxide depletion effect near the membrane, potentially useful information for future system designs.

A key part of this work was the development of a computational model mirroring, and interpreting, what is going on inside the cell. Using the experimental observations to provide a framework to build the theoretical model allowed the team to effectively bound the scope and validate the model, in ways that would have been essentially impossible without the experimental data. The hope is that this model, which has now been validated with experimental data, in conjunction with flow cell maps can be used by future researchers as an initial screening tool in designing new DAC systems.

This work has the potential for significant impact. DAC Facilities using alkaline liquids are being built at the industrial scale. Researchers are actively developing new and improved capture liquids to make the process more efficient, cheaper, and use less energy. With a cell design that enables accurate mapping, and a computational model that enables faster screening, the process of optimizing the carbon capture reactions can be accelerated. On an industrial scale even small improvements in reaction efficiency and cost can have huge savings on the system scale. Current approaches just look at the input and corresponding output of the cell, like judging a medical treatment by whether the patient recovered, without being able to examine what really happened inside the body.

This research describes a detailed, data-driven approach to answering the questions about what is really happening at the reactive center of DAC: how does a given liquid behave, what is happening at the interface where the chemistry is happening, how does varying the conditions impact the reaction? The combination of the experimental and theoretical tools disclosed by this work provides insight into how these processes work, and the key variables that can be used to optimize it.

The application of these tools can potentially extend beyond DAC. Wherever chemistry and transport interact at an interface, such as electrochemical systems that convert CO₂ into fuels or commodity chemicals, or in the separation of critical minerals. The design of this device was around one specific challenge, but has the potential for broad utility.

The transition from black box to observable system does not, by itself, solve the engineering challenges ahead. Models still need refinement, and scaling to industrial practice requires substantial research. But the ability to directly observe what is happening is a critical step in that process. What was previously assumed can now be tested. The reaction black box now has a window, that enables researchers to gain valuable insights into the inner workings of this critical process.

May 2026

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High-Energy Hybridized States Enable Long-Lived Hot Electrons in Cobaloxime-Silicon Nanocrystal System

Daniel Morton — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 18:08:30 +0000

High-Energy Hybridized States Enable Long-Lived Hot Electrons in Cobaloxime-Silicon Nanocrystal System Daniel Morton Sun, 02/08/2026 - 11:08

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, 2026, 148, 6, 6412-6421

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Mechanism-Informed Breakdown: Understanding Degradation by Controlling Voltage-Hold Patterns in Proton Exchange Membrane Water Electrolyzers

Daniel Morton — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 17:31:03 +0000

Mechanism-Informed Breakdown: Understanding Degradation by Controlling Voltage-Hold Patterns in Proton Exchange Membrane Water Electrolyzers Daniel Morton Sat, 01/10/2026 - 10:31

ACS APPLIED ENERGY MATERIALS, 2026, 9, 2, 924-937

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Platinum–Ruthenium Alloys Are Not Bifunctional CO Electro-Oxidation Catalysts: A Kinetic Analysis

Daniel Morton — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:10:35 +0000

Platinum–Ruthenium Alloys Are Not Bifunctional CO Electro-Oxidation Catalysts: A Kinetic Analysis Daniel Morton Tue, 12/23/2025 - 17:10

ACS ENERGY LETTERS, 2025, 11, 1, 664-672

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Assessing the Long-Term Stability of Anion Exchange Membranes for Electrochemical CO2 Reduction

Daniel Morton — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:06:34 +0000

Assessing the Long-Term Stability of Anion Exchange Membranes for Electrochemical CO2 Reduction Daniel Morton Tue, 12/23/2025 - 17:06

ACS APPLIED ENERGY MATERIALS, 2025, 9, 1, 359-371

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Spin-Polarized Oxygen Evolution Reaction Enabled by Chiral Molecules Coupled with Ferromagnetic Electrocatalysts

Daniel Morton — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:31:56 +0000

Spin-Polarized Oxygen Evolution Reaction Enabled by Chiral Molecules Coupled with Ferromagnetic Electrocatalysts Daniel Morton Thu, 12/11/2025 - 17:31

ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES, 2025, 17, 51, 69389-69397

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Agami Zero Breaks Through with Magnetic Hydrogen Advance

Daniel Morton — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 22:50:11 +0000

Agami Zero Breaks Through with Magnetic Hydrogen Advance Daniel Morton Wed, 12/03/2025 - 15:50

A startup team led by RASEI Fellow Oana Luca, called Agami Zero, has just secured seed funding after winning the 2025 CU Lab Venture Challenge. Their winning idea? A new way to produce hydrogen fuel more efficiently, a key mechanism for decarbonizing our energy economy.

Hydrogen is an essential puzzle piece in removing carbon from our energy economy and reducing pollution, but it is not without its challenges. While the overarching goal is to electrify as much of the economy as possible (like swapping gas central heaters for heat pumps), there are some critical areas, including sectors such as long-haul shipping, aviation, and heavy industry (steel / cement production), that are extremely difficult to power with electricity alone. While there are many researchers that are innovating in this space, and exciting discoveries that could lead to future alternatives, Hydrogen, which is an energy-dense, zero-emission fuel, is one of our most promising solutions for decarbonization.

What color is my hydrogen? There is a whole rainbow of hydrogen classifications, with over 10 different colors in total. Each color is defined based on how the hydrogen is produced. While we are not going to take a deep dive into each class here, there are some great resources where you can learn more.

Currently, most hydrogen produced today is Gray Hydrogen. This means it is produced from fossil gas using a process called Steam-Methane Reforming (SMR). The SMR process is a significant contributor to industrial carbon emissions globally, (95% of hydrogen produced in the United States is from SMR), the role of fossil gas in this process means that gray hydrogen is actually a contributor to the pollution problem, not a solution.

Blue Hydrogen is a little bit better, but still not a sustainable solution. Blue Hydrogen is generated using the same processes as Gray Hydrogen, using fossil gas, but the carbon emissions are captured and then sequestered or used in other processes. The use of fossil gas as the feedstock, and the energy required to capture the carbon emissions, also means that this is not a sustainable solution for decarbonized energy.

The real goal is to produce Green Hydrogen. Green Hydrogen is produced using carbon-free renewable electricity (such as wind and solar). The process uses renewable energy to power an electrolyzer, which separates water into hydrogen and oxygen. Green Hydrogen production does not emit any carbon pollution, but there are still challenges associated with this process. This is the area where Agami Zero team are focused, using a clever application of fundamental physics, the Lorentz Force.

A key challenge with the Green Hydrogen process is one of efficiency. Standard electrolysis of water requires a lot of energy. Gas bubbles that form on the electrodes often create electrical resistance, which forces the system to work harder, reducing the overall efficiency. The innovation from Agami Zero is to introduce a technology originally invented, and proven, in space(!), something called magnetically enhanced electrolysis (MEE). In the electrolysis process, an electrical current is used to split the water molecules. When the electrical current passes through the water (which conducts the current), the movement of these charged particles (ions), near the electrode surfaces is affected by the presence of a magnetic field. The force exerted on the ions by the magnetic field is called the Lorentz Force. Researchers found that when a magnetic field is applied to the electrolysis cell, the bubbles forming at the electrode, the ones that cause an increase in the electrical resistance, detach from the electrodes much faster.

The movement of the ions at the surface of the electrode, caused by the magnetic field, trigger the bubbles to detach. Think of it like the magnetic field providing a subtle, but continuous, “nudge”, moving the bubbles, and clearing the way for the electric current. Through careful control and tuning of the magnetic field the Agami Zero team can considerably improve the overall efficiency of the process. This clever technique reduces the systems electrical resistance, enabling a higher rate of hydrogen generation for the same amount of power.

The team is comprised of Oana Luca, RASEI Fellow, Hunter Koltunski, chemistry graduate student and scientific lead and Jafar Makrani (Agami Zero) and Lyle Antieau (Agami Zero) who bring extensive business and industry expertise to the Agami Zero team. The collaboration also includes Prof. Rich Noble, member of National Academy of Inventors and experienced entrepreneur as a mentor and Prof. Ankur Gupta, a modeling expert who will be assisting in scaleup work.

“Early in May 2025, Jafar and Lyle reached out to discuss the idea of magnetohydrodynamic electrolysis (MHD) for hydrogen production.” Explains Luca. “Jafar and Lyle had put together a business case for why the MHD approach would be successful. After reading more about the Lorentz force and quite a few email exchanges among the various team members. I remember going to group meeting and asking Hunter what he thinks about magnetic effects in electrolysis reactions and he was immediately intrigued.” Within a week Hunter was in the lab building some apparatus called Halbach arrays, the effects of which were substantial, and the rest is history. The team came together quite organically. Rich Noble is a long-term collaborator and mentor for Oana, who had engaged in many field-effect-related discussions (and for quite a few years), and Ankur rounded out the team with his mass transport expertise and the needed modeling.

In October of 2025 Agami Zero competed in the 2025 Lab Venture Challenge. Since 2018 ��Ƶ has hosted the Lab Venture Challenge, which has now funded more than 115 innovative projects, resulting in 70 new deep-tech startup companies, leading to over $300M in follow-on financing raised by companies. Each year teams participate in an intensive application process that culminates in the LVC Community Showcase. This year eleven teams from ��Ƶ, that brought together faculty, researchers, and graduate students, competed for a combined $755,000 in startup funding grants. The community showcases adopt a “Shark Tank” style format, where the teams pitch, in front of a live audience, their ideas and innovations to a panel of judges. This year Agami Zero were competing in the Physical Sciences category and were able to convince the judges panel that their approach using MEE to offer scalable and cost-effective hydrogen fuel for transportation, industry, and off-grid power, should win.

The success of Agami Zero, from an innovative idea to a winning pitch at the LVC, is more than an entrepreneurial accomplishment, it is a testament to how researchers can use scientific understanding to solve real world problems. By taking a fundamental concept such as the Lorentz Force and applying it to a bottleneck in hydrogen generation, Oana, Hunter, and the entire team now have the opportunity to make a measurable difference in how we generate green hydrogen. This seed funding gives them a real chance to explore this idea, and we look forward to watching how Agami Zero innovates in scaling up Green Hydrogen applications.

December 2025

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New Molecular Materials for Direct Air Capture of Carbon Dioxide Using Electro-Swing Chemistry

Daniel Morton — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 17:40:50 +0000

New Molecular Materials for Direct Air Capture of Carbon Dioxide Using Electro-Swing Chemistry Daniel Morton Mon, 12/01/2025 - 10:40

APPLIED SCIENCES, 2025, 15, 23, 12739

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Structure–Property–Performance Relationships of Tetra-Alkylated Phenazine Photoredox Catalysts in Organocatalyzed Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization

Daniel Morton — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 18:34:58 +0000

Structure–Property–Performance Relationships of Tetra-Alkylated Phenazine Photoredox Catalysts in Organocatalyzed Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization Daniel Morton Mon, 11/03/2025 - 11:34

MACROMOLECULES, 2025, 58, 22, 12241-12249
November 2025

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New ‘Molecular Dam’ Stops Energy Leaks in Nanocrystals

Daniel Morton — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 19:17:19 +0000

New ‘Molecular Dam’ Stops Energy Leaks in Nanocrystals Daniel Morton Tue, 10/21/2025 - 13:17

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A molecular engineering breakthrough could make key light-driven reactions over 40 times more efficient.

A collaborative team of scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of California Irvine, and Fort Lewis College, led by RASEI Fellow Gordana Dukovic, has found a way to slow energy leaks that have impeded the use of tiny nanocrystals in light-driven chemical and energy applications. As described in a new article published in the journal Chem, the team has used a molecule that strongly binds to the nanocrystal’s surface, essentially acting like a ‘dam’ to hold back the energy stored in the charge-separated state formed after light absorption. This technique extends the lifetime of the charge separation to the longest recorded for these materials, providing a pathway to improved efficiencies and more opportunities to put this energy to work in chemical reactions. This collaboration is part of the U.S. Department of Energy funded Energy Frontier Research Center: Ensembles of Photosynthetic Nanoreactors (EPN).

Harnessing Light to Power Chemistry

Many of the products we rely on today, from plastics, to fertilizers, and pharmaceuticals, are created, or synthesized, through industrial chemical reactions that can often require immense heat and pressure, typically generated by burning fossil fuels. For decades there has been research exploring a less harsh and theoretically more efficient alternative: Photocatalysis. The goal is to use a compound, a “photocatalyst”, that can harness the energy in light and use it to power chemical reactions at room temperature. Semiconductor nanocrystals, particles that are over a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, are a leading candidate for this job. When exposed to light these nanocrystals generate a short-lived spark of energy, in the form of a separated negative charge (an electron) and a positive charge (called a “hole”, due to the absence of an electron). A key challenge in this area is that this spark disappears quickly, because the electron and the hole recombine, and the energy is lost before it can be put to good use.

Building a Molecular Dam

To solve this problem the team focused on building what we might call a ‘molecular dam’, something that helps prevent, or at least slow down, the electron and the hole from recombining. This research started with cadmium sulfide (CdS) nanocrystals and designed a molecule (in this case a phenothiazine derivative) with two key features; first the incorporation of a chemical group that acts as a ‘sticky anchor’ (in this case a carboxylate group), which binds strongly to the nanocrystal surface, and second, a molecular structure that quickly accepts the positive charge (the hole), from the nanocrystal to realize the light-driven charge separation event.

By anchoring this molecule to the surface of the nanocrystal the team created a highly efficient and stable pathway. As soon as exposure to light creates the electron-hole pair in the nanocrystal, the anchored molecule shuttles the hole away, physically separating it from the electron. This physical separation of the electron and the hole prevents the two from quickly snapping back together and wasting the energy. This results in a charge-separated state that lasts for microseconds, which is an eternity in the world of photochemistry, creating a much larger window of time for future researchers to work with in terms of harnessing this captured light-driven energy for useful chemical reactions. The team was able to prove the significance of the ‘sticky anchor’ carboxylate, by comparing their derivative to a phenothiazine that lacked the anchor, which was shown to be far less effective at holding the energy, demonstrating that this anchoring to the surface was key to this system’s performance.

This collaborative work was done as part of the U.S. Department of Energy funded Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) Ensembles of Photosynthetic Nanoreactors (EPN). EPN consists of 17 senior investigates located across 9 universities and 3 U.S. national laboratories. The goal of EPN is to provide a forum for collaboration, bringing together expertise to advance the frontiers of discovery and fundamental knowledge in photochemical energy conversion. The aim is to not only foster new discoveries and applications, but in doing so, train the researchers who will build knowledge and advances that will benefit the United States innovation and economy.

This project took advantage of the different areas of expertise of each team to generate ideas and quickly execute them. Kenny Miller’s group of dedicated undergraduate researchers at Fort Lewis College synthesized the carboxylated phenothiazine derivative (and a slew of others). Miller then sent the derivative to Jenny Yang’s group of inorganic electrochemists at UC Irvine for advanced electrochemical characterization. Gordana Dukovic’s group here at ��Ƶ synthesized the nanocrystals, tested their compatibility with the derivative, characterized the binding, and undertook the advanced laser spectroscopy study to see how the electrons and holes behaved.

“The first time I saw the results-saw how effective our ‘molecular dam’ was at slowing charge recombination-I knew we had struck gold” explained Dr. Sophia Click, a lead author on the study. “To slow charge recombination from nanoseconds to microseconds, and with a molecule that can be paired with so many existing photocatalyst systems, makes this work vital to share with as many researchers as possible.”

Development of this ‘molecular dam’ could have implications for the future design of catalysts for light-driven chemistry. By increasing the efficiency of the initial energy-capture step, this system improves the efficiency of the entire process. This could improve not just one specific reaction, but rather, benefit a broad range of light-driven chemical reactions. A key technology this could enhance is the development of light-driven creation of chemical commodities or high-value chemicals. This research provides a more robust and versatile chemical toolkit for exploring these possibilities.

This discovery in controlling charge-separation, and energy, at the nanoscale is an important design parameter into developing light-driven chemistry, and hopefully light-driven chemical manufacturing. Imagine a future where materials, such as plastics, and even pharmaceuticals, are not made in energy inefficient high-temperature reactors powered by fossil fuels but instead are synthesized directly and efficiently using the power of light. While this vision is still on the horizon, the work done in this collaboration provides an important piece of the scientific puzzle, constituting a huge leap toward one day achieving these goals.

The study, “Exceptionally Long-Lived Charge Separated States in CdS Nanocrystals with a Covalently Bound Phenothiazine Derivative” was published in the journal Chem. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, as part of the Energy Frontier Research Center: Ensembles of Photosynthetic Nanoreactors (EPN; DE-SC0023431), with additional experiments on nanorods supported by Air Force Office of Scientific Research under AFOSR (FA9550-22-1-0347).

October 2025

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