oin us on Wednesday, 3/18 at 5:30 pm at Barnsider restaurant as we present the second 2025 Buck-Whitney Award to Dr. Kwabena Bediako of the University of California at Berkeley. Register here
Light networking will start at 5:30 pm, followed by dinner and a short business meeting. At approximately 7 pm, Dr. Bediako will present on construction of magnetic solids for efficient electrochemical energy conversion processes in electronic and computing systems. The full abstract can be found below.
The invention of modular materials that are amenable to deterministic, atomically precise manipulation is a pre-requisite for fundamental advances in both electronics and energy conversion/storage. The control of electronic structures at electrode–electrolyte interfaces is key to efficient electrochemical energy conversion processes, and magnetic solids offer some of the most promising solutions to accelerating energy demand by electronic/computing systems. This talk will describe recent insights into controlling these phenomena using two approaches involving the construction of inorganic “superlattices” and “heterostructures” in 2D materials:
(1) “Moiré” superlattices of atomically thin layers provide a distinctive platform for manipulating interfacial electron transfer owing to the angle-dependent control over flat electronic bands and spontaneous strain relaxation. The origin of this behavior challenges the traditional presumption that the reorganization energy for interfacial electron transfer—the key parameter that governs the activation energy barrier—is dominated by the electrolyte side of the electrode–electrolyte interface. Instead, we establish the electronic contribution to the Marcus reorganization energy in interfacial electrochemistry.
(2) We have developed topotactic routes to create two-dimensional magnets and ultraclean magnetic heterostructures that have no bulk analogue. Our work shows conclusively that mixed superlattices can be present even in crystals that should contain a single superlattice according to stoichiometry and demonstrates how superlattice engineering of bulk crystals can be used to design and pattern macroscopic transport responses in intercalation compounds.
