Core Research Areas
Catalysis, Electrocatalysis, Spectroscopy, Synthesis, Operando Measurements, Theory, Reactor Design, Technoeconomic Analysis
Why Catalysis, Why Now?
Every material object you interact with, fuels that power your car or heat your home, and nearly every medicine you take exists because of catalysis, which is the science of accelerating chemical reactions using materials that are themselves unchanged in the process. To this point, the vast majority of catalysts driving our economy have depended on fossil fuels as both their energy source and their raw material, locking the production of essential chemicals and fuels into a cycle that is warming our planet. The urgency of climate change has made breaking that cycle one of the defining scientific challenges of our time and catalysis is at the center of the solution. Advances in renewable electricity, materials science, and molecular design have converged to make this moment uniquely promising: we now have the tools to reimagine how the world's most important chemical processes work, powering them with sunlight and wind instead of coal and oil. But the gap between a promising laboratory result and a technology that operates reliably at industrial scale remains enormous, and closing it requires exactly the kind of deep, interdisciplinary collaboration that CICLEC facilitates. The discoveries made here at UVA today are the foundation on which a sustainable chemical economy will be built tomorrow.
Research Themes of CICLEC at UVA
1. Building Catalysts from the Atom Up
The most powerful catalysts are not discovered by accident — they are designed deliberately, one atom at a time. By carefully engineering the chemical environment surrounding a metal center, CICLEC researchers can tune how that metal interacts with molecules, controlling which bonds break, which form, and how quickly these steps happen. This approach draws on expertise in coordination and organometallic chemistry, the branches of science concerned with how metals bind to organic and inorganic partners. The arrangement of atoms around a catalyst's active site determines what chemistry it can perform and a molecular-level design philosophy gives our researchers the ability to draw direct connections between a catalyst's structure and its performance.
2. Harnessing Electricity to Drive Chemical Reactions
Rather than relying on heat and pressure to drive chemical transformations, electrocatalysis uses electrical energy (ideally sourced from solar panels or wind turbines) to power reactions at an electrode. This approach offers a promising path to a sustainable chemical industry, one where the energy input comes from renewable electricity rather than fossil fuels. CICLEC pursues electrocatalysis across a remarkably wide spectrum, from single molecules tethered to an electrode surface all the way to complex nanomaterial architectures that can process fuels and chemicals at scale. This breadth is a strategic advantage: molecular systems allow scientists to study mechanisms with extraordinary precision, while materials-based systems demonstrate whether those insights translate into practical technology. Custom electrochemical reactors, including pressurized flow cells capable of continuous operation, allow the team to test catalysts under conditions that closely mimic real industrial processes.
3. Engineering Matter at the Nanoscale
At dimensions a thousand times smaller than a human hair, the properties of materials become exquisitely sensitive to shape, composition, and surface structure. By synthesizing nanostructured materials with precisely controlled interfaces between metals, metal oxides, and molecular ligands, CICLEC researchers can program catalytic behavior in ways that bulk materials simply cannot achieve. Techniques ranging from wet chemical synthesis to electrodeposition allow the team to build particles, films, and frameworks with architectural control down to the level of individual atomic layers. Atomically dispersed catalysts (single metal atoms are anchored within a supporting matrix) represent a particularly exciting frontier, offering the efficiency of a molecular catalyst with the stability and scalability of a solid material. This synthetic capability allows CICLEC researchers to create new catalysts designed to solve specific problems.
4. Watching Catalysts Work in Real Time
Understanding why a catalyst works — or why it fails — requires observing it under the very conditions in which it operates (operando experiments), not just before and after a reaction. CICLEC researchers use an extensive suite of spectroscopic and analytical tools capable of probing catalyst surfaces, active site structures, and reaction intermediates while chemistry is actively occurring. Infrared and Raman spectroscopy reveal the fingerprints of molecules as they bind and transform on a catalyst surface, while techniques like differential electrochemical mass spectrometry track the gases produced at an electrode in real time. An especially powerful addition to this toolkit is solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance enhanced by dynamic nuclear polarization, which can detect and characterize catalytic active sites at the molecular level even in complex, disordered materials. Paired with rigorous kinetic measurements that quantify how fast and how efficiently a catalyst operates, these capabilities allow the CICLEC team to turn qualitative observations into quantitative, mechanistic understanding.
5. From Fundamental Discovery to Real-World Impact
No catalyst exists in isolation — its value ultimately depends on whether it can contribute to a cleaner, more sustainable world at meaningful scale. CICLEC research bridges the gap between laboratory discovery and societal relevance through two complementary lenses: computational modeling and sustainability analysis. On the theoretical side, advanced simulations based on quantum mechanics allow researchers to predict how catalysts behave under realistic operating conditions, accelerating the design cycle and revealing phenomena that would be nearly impossible to observe experimentally. On the practical side, life cycle assessment and technoeconomic analysis situate new catalytic processes within real economic and environmental contexts, answering the critical question of whether a promising laboratory result could actually make a difference if deployed at industrial scale. Together, these tools ensure that CICLEC's scientific creativity is always grounded in the question that matters most: does this move us meaningfully toward a sustainable future?
Funding Sources
