@boettcherlab.bsky.social

electrochemical science, engineering, and technology research laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Historical picture wall from our Oregon lab has a new home in our Berkeley lab. The team made some of the greatest PhD defense advertisement posters ever.

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Leiden is beautiful and with a deep science history, where helium was first liquefied. Also was able to catch alumni Dr Haokun Chen at his job at Brineworks building bipolar membrane electrolyzers!

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External "opponent" for PhD defense of Onno van der Heijden promoted by Marc Koper. The Dutch traditions at the defense and ceremony are wonderful. Leiden is a spectacular small city with the intact old architecture still dominating a garden like center built around the canals.

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First stop for a quick summer work trip in Europe was at the EMEA conference in Bad Zwischenahn. This is one of the premier gatherings of scientists working on ionomer membranes that are polymer ion conductors for energy conversion devices in electrolysis and fuel cells.

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Wonderful to visit Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory hosted by An Chu and Chris Hahn. No photo allowed on site, so here is one from lunch. Lots of excellent echem technology work at LLNL. Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory and National Ignition Facility v. impressive.

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Proud of the undergraduates earning their degrees. Nadia and Caitlyn are graduating from Honors College, defended outstanding theses on their excellent electrochemistry research, excelled in full suite of OCE graduate courses and are off to internships + a bright future.

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Congratulations to the latest Boettcher PhD - Dr. Olivia Vulpin! Olivia figured out how to make mechanically robust advanced BPMs and has started Nuwohm to manufacture and sell them worldwide!

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Congrats to Dr. Kira Thurman! Kira was joint student with Prof. Paul Kempler who launched a new project on our team looking at interfacial ion transfer kinetics in well-defined model surfaces.

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Catalysis Scientists: We are looking at CO2 hydrogenation catalysts to make liquid fuels (hydrocarbons and/or alcohols ethanol or higher). Literature preps in both fixed bed and parr reactors not reproducible in our hands. Who has a recipe that is reproducible that you personally have seen work?

Phenomenal PhD student Minkyoung Kwak defended her thesis last week - incredible work designing electrode anode materials and passivation layers for alkaline membrane electrolysis!

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Phenomenal PhD student Minkyoung Kwak defended her thesis last week - incredible work designing electrode anode materials and passivation layers for alkaline membrane electrolysis!

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Busy week... great visits to U Chicago and UW Madison where there are just incredible faculty doing important research in electrochemical science and engineering, followed by intense work with our LiSA team at Caltech on a, fingers-crossed, renewal proposal..

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My off-grid electric car charging station test is alive. Pretty easy cheap and awesome. I guess tariffs will increase cost now. Need to add a few more LFP batteries. Soon to be solar pergola... anyone can do this.

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Congratulations again to Kelsey Stoerzinger, collaborator and winner of The Marks-Ipatieff Award in Catalysis recognizing outstanding research by an early-career investigator in the field of catalysis.

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Just finished productive couple days at ARPA-e summit with partners from NREL and e-Spin. Tremendous enthusiasm for our new venture led by Olivia Vulpine taking our advanced BPMs to market, a key to unlocking high current low capex next generation electrodialysis.

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PhD Graduations are wonderful events. Aaron Kaufman's work was special blending the physics of selective contacts in semiconductors with photoelectrochemistry and and voltage sensing via ambient pressure XPS.

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