The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is an acceleration in how new materials are discovered, designed, and commercialized in the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. One aim is to increase the use of renewable electricity in the chemical and energy industries. A major hurdle is the lack of efficient electrocatalysts that enable renewable processes, such as green hydrogen production, carbon dioxide (CO2) conversion into carbon-neutral chemicals and fuels, or other processes that can broadly decarbonize various industries. Traditional discovery methods are slow and serial, which limits the development of novel, commercially viable electrochemical processes demanded by the climate crisis. This project will enable a more rapid and exhaustive search for electrocatalysts, resulting in a deeper understanding of the nature of catalysts, and facilitating the decarbonization of the chemicals and energy industries by displacing traditional fossil fuel-based processes with a transition to electrification which utilizes increasing levels of renewable energy. The proposed platform will expedite the discovery and development of enabling materials, which can be brought to market and deployed globally to enable more renewable chemical processes.This SBIR Phase I project proposes to develop a generalizable platform that can rapidly search through vast materials spaces for higher performance electrocatalyst materials, displacing the current materials which are simply the best amongst the limited candidates tested to date. Using this project?s proprietary Megalibrary technology, which enables the rapid synthesis of libraries of tens of thousands of unique, well-defined, monodisperse, and complex metal nanoparticles in a single experiment, coupled with high-throughput screening technologies, it is possible to quickly probe hundreds of thousands of unique catalyst candidates to find electrocatalysts optimized for performance. To accomplish this goal, the project must adapt protocols to allow the synthesis of electrocatalyst Megalibraries on electrodes and enable electrocatalyst screening. Additionally, the approach requires robust and high-throughput screening methods that can site-specifically interrogate the electrocatalytic properties of the catalyst candidates. Using these two innovations, it will be possible to then demonstrate the power of the platform by searching the entirety of a three element platinium and materials (Pt-M1-M2) space for the best hydrogen evolution reaction catalyst on a per platinum-atom basis. This demonstration will solidify the ability to translate this platform to a much broader materials space and set of reactions, which can impact businesses and industries globally.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
