Publication date: 28th August 2024
Inspired by recent developments in electrocatalysis and battery science, mastering the electrolyte structure has emerged as a means to introduce an additional level of control in electrosynthetic routes. In pursuit of using greener reactants, mixtures of organic solvent and water are currently investigated to harness water either as the oxygen-atom source in anodic reactions or as the proton/deuterium source in electrochemical protonation/deuteration of alkyl halides. Nevertheless, how the nature of the organic solvent and supporting salt modulates water structuring in these mixtures and its impact on the outcome of electrosynthetic reactions is of fundamental importance and is yet to be understood.
In this work, we investigate mixtures of acetonitrile (ACN), acetone, N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) and tetrahydrofuran (THF) with different water concentration by NMR and IR spectroscopy, small-angle X-ray scattering, bulk and interfacial molecular dynamics simulations and electrochemistry. Although mixtures of ACN and water are homogeneous macroscopically, heterogeneity exists at the microscale with the formation of aqueous and organic nanodomains. However, our measurements show that in DMF/water mixtures there is no sign of microheterogeneity as DMF and water readily incorporate into each other’s hydrogen bonding networks. Acetone/water and THF/water mixtures microscale structuration fall in-between the two previously described extreme cases. Interestingly, we show that water’s structuring in the different mixtures modulates its reactivity at electrified interfaces as probed for two exemplar reactions: the epoxidation of alkenes competing with oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and the hydrogenation/deuteration of alkynes competing with the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Design principles are discussed on how to prepare hybrid electrolytes for enhanced yield and selectivity for oxygen or hydrogen atom transfer reactions.
nanoGe is a prestigious brand of successful science conferences that are developed along the year in different areas of the world since 2009. Our worldwide conferences cover cutting-edge materials topics like perovskite solar cells, photovoltaics, optoelectronics, solar fuel conversion, surface science, catalysis and two-dimensional materials, among many others.
Previously nanoGe Spring Meeting (NSM) and nanoGe Fall Meeting (NFM), MATSUS is a multiple symposia conference focused on a broad set of topics of advanced materials preparation, their fundamental properties, and their applications, in fields such as renewable energy, photovoltaics, lighting, semiconductor quantum dots, 2-D materials synthesis, charge carriers dynamics, microscopy and spectroscopy semiconductors fundamentals, etc.
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV) is celebrated yearly in May. The main topics are the development, function and modeling of materials and devices for hybrid and organic solar cells. The field is now dominated by perovskite solar cells but also other hybrid technologies, as organic solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, and dye-sensitized solar cells and their integration into devices for photoelectrochemical solar fuel production.
Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics
The main topics of the Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics (IPEROP) are discussed every year in Asia-Pacific for gathering the recent advances in the fields of material preparation, modeling and fabrication of perovskite and hybrid and organic materials. Photovoltaic devices are analyzed from fundamental physics and materials properties to a broad set of applications. The conference also covers the developments of perovskite optoelectronics, including light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.
The International Conference on Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics Perovskite Photonics and Optoelectronics (NIPHO) is the best place to hear the latest developments in perovskite solar cells as well as on recent advances in the fields of perovskite light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.