Abstract:

Electrochemical nanomaterials have witnessed extensive applications in catalysis, energy storage, and conversion. In this talk, I will present some new synergies from electrochemical nanomaterials that enable new applications in both catalysis and microbiology. Because electrochemical nanomaterials spatiotemporally control the microscopic concentration profiles of chemical species, we envision electrochemistry at the microscopic scale as a viable tool for transducing electronic signals into controlled non-equilibrium systems. Aided by the machine-learning-based inverse design, we will discuss how to establish catalytic reactions of seemingly incompatible steps, as well as how to mimic and perturb the extracellular space in microbiology. The ubiquity of non-equilibrium systems in chemistry and biology suggests much more applications of electrochemically controlled spatiotemporal heterogeneity in the future.