Contact Information:
e-mail:
phone: (217) 333-6841
fax: (217) 333-5052
213 Roger Adams Lab
MC-712, Box C-3
600 S. Mathews Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801
Catalytic reactions are everywhere: in your home, in your car, in a wide variety of industries from semiconductor manufacturing to consumer products. Masel's group tries to develop general principles which can be applied to a wide variety of reactions. The work combines a variety of spectroscopic tools and abinitio calculations to get a general understanding of kinetic phenomenon.
Masel's group is concentrating on five areas: microchemical systems, micro fuel cells, catalysis in fuel cells, engineering approximations in kinetics, environmental catalysis. In the microchemical systems area we are building small chip scale chemical reactors for fuel conversion, smart clothing and personal heat sources. We are also examining principles that can be applied to these systems. In the fuel cell area, we are building the worlds smallest fuel cells as battery replacements. We are also examining the molecular basis of CO tolerance in fuel cells, and examining fuel cell catalysis for novel fuels such as formic acid and ammonia. In the environmental area we are examining the catalytic chemistry of odorous molecules produced in farms. We are also constructing combined adsorption/reaction devices for odor control. In a more theoretical effort we are developing engineering approximations that allow one to predict rate constants with pencil and paper calculations. All of the work depends very heavily on being able to do careful surface spectroscopy, and to being able to interpret the results using modern computational tools.
Saeed Moghaddam, Eakkachai Pengwang, Ying-Bing Jiang, Jeffrey Brinker, Richard I. Masel, Mark A. Shannon, "An Inorganic-Organic Proton Exchange Membrane for Fuel Cells with a Controlled Nanoscale Pore Structure," Nature Nanotechnology, (in press, 2010).
J. Haan, R. I. Masel, "The Influence of Solution pH on Rates of an Electrocatalytic Reaction Unexpected Findings for Formic Acid Electrooxidation on Platinum and Palladium," Electrochemica Acta, 54, 4073-4078 (2009).
Hee Soo Kim, Robert D. Morgan, Bogdan Gurau, Richard I. Masel, "A Miniature Direct Formic Acid Fuel Cell Battery," J. Power Sources, 188, 118-121 (2009).
Jungkyu Choi, Hae-Kwon Jeong, Mark A. Snyder, Jared A. Stoeger, Richard I. Masel, Michael Tsapatsis, "Grain Boundary Defect Elimination in a Zeolite Membrane by Rapid Thermal Processing," Science, 325, 590-593 (2009).
Adarsh D. Radadia, Richard I. Masel, and Mark A. Shannon, "Partially Buried Microcolumns for Micro Gas Analyzers," Analytical Chemistry, 81, 3471-3477 (2009).
Chelsea Monty and Richard I. Masel, "Non-biological Inhibition Based Sensing (NIBS) demonstrated For The Detection of Toxic Sulfides," Analytical Chemistry, 81(15), 6416–6421 (2009).
