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35 East 12th Street, Holland, MI 49423-3605
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TITLE: “Unexplored Facets of Layered Materials: New Looks to Old Faces”
ABSTRACT: The discovery and development of new materials tailored to a specific function remain as one of the grand challenges for materials’ scientists. To this end, layered materials have been extensively studied due to the sundry of properties that emerge from chemical and physical modifications. Unfortunately, little is still known of the fundamental requirements to generate pronounced and tailored alterations to the electronic structure upon dimensional reduction or functionalization of their active sites. Comprehensive nanoscale characterization is essential to understand how the loss of 3D structural coherence and further modifications of the surface, induced because of ion intercalation, exfoliation to 2D sheets, or functionalization of the basal planes, alter the electronic structure of these materials which translates into physical properties. In this talk, I will discuss the use of layered VS2 structures as seed to nucleate VOOH nanostars and the precise control of ligand modification on Fe-based layered double hydroxides as novel catalysts. With these modifications, we seek to understand changes in the capabilities of these materials to serve as pollution remediation catalysts, especially for emergent pollutants.
BIO: Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Dr. Luis R. De Jesús Báez obtained his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey. From there, he worked for Prof. Sarbajit Banerjee to pursue his Ph.D. at Texas A&M University where he focused on mapping electronic structure inhomogeneities and modeling spectroscopic signatures of electrode materials. During his graduate studies, Luis obtained the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the American Physical Society Robert S. Hyer Graduate Award. Additionally, he was awarded the IUPAC-Solvay International Award for Young Chemists and the 2019 ACS-Division of Inorganic Chemistry Young Investigator Award. He started his postdoctoral fellowship in 2018 as a Eberly College of Science Postdoctoral Fellow at Pennsylvania State University working under the supervision of Prof. Thomas E. Mallouk. He then moved in 2019 to the University of Pennsylvania as a Provost Postdoctoral Fellowship following his postdoc advisor. His research interests involved the synthesis and functionalization of 2D layered MXene materials. Luis is currently an assistant professor in the department of chemistry of the University at Buffalo – SUNY exploring the relationship between strain and electronic structure modification in solids for developing novel electrodes for energy devices and catalytic systems. He has been awarded the 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award, Scialog: Negative Emission Science Fellowship, SUNY-TAF award, CMI-FIAR award, and the NSF – AGEP Lighthouse Beacon Fellowship.
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