The GAO Materials Chemistry Research Group

Nitrogen fixation using electrochemistry presents an environmentally-sound alternative to the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch process. Using air as the feed stock would represent an important step towards future industrialization of green ammonia. In their paper, “ZIF-supported AuCu Nanoalloy for Ammonia Electrosynthesis from Nitrogen and Thin Air”, Lv, Wang, and co-authors report a gold-copper nanoalloy-decorated zeolitic imidazolate framework that exhibits a high ammonia yield, remarkable efficiency, long-term stability and pH independence, demonstrating the technological viability of producing ammonia from thin air.
See full article at RSC.

It is with great excitement that we wish to announce the upcoming release of The Story of CO2: Big Ideas for a Small Molecule by Prof. Geoffrey Ozin and PhD candidate Mireille Ghoussoub. The Story of CO2 is anticipated for release in October 2020 by University of Toronto Press.

Now available for pre-order!

About the book: The climate crisis requires that we drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions across all sectors of society. The Story of CO2 contributes to this vital conversation by highlighting the cutting-edge science and emerging technologies – a number of which are already commercially available – that can transform carbon dioxide into a myriad of products such as feedstock chemicals, polymers, pharmaceuticals, and fuels. This approach allows us to reconsider CO2 as a resource, and to add “carbon capture and use” to our other tools in the fight against catastrophic climate change.

Global scientific output roughly doubles every nine years and editors are left facing the tsunami of publications seeking homes in elite journals. The situation has created the perfect storm for biased selection criteria – whether intentional or unintentional – at the peer review gate, putting many researchers at a disadvantage. Is it time to rethink our values in higher education and place real science and social creativity as the key criteria in this sector rather than productivity and profit? Perhaps the time has come to rethink how and where we showcase our breakthroughs.
See full article at Advanced Science News.

With the COVID-19 pandemic threatening public health and rapidly spreading around the world, science communication has never been more timely. In their article, Dr. Geoffrey Ozin and artist Todd Siler engage in cross-disciplinary collaboration to speak to what is currently happening around the globe. The artwork displayed in this article intimates how a chance natural event can create a widespread human catastrophe; one that involves a molecular biological assembly, a nano-bio-scale material, as exemplified by COVID-19.
See full article at Advanced Science News.

Are the wide-ranging tasks and the vast repertoire of skills of the university teaching professor replaceable by a robot? With recent developments in supercomputer power, big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that with all-knowledge endowed robot educators and robot assistants could rise to match or even outperform professors and teaching assistants in the theater of higher learning.
See full article at Advanced Science News.

The self-driving chemistry laboratory has now made its debut, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, supercomputers, and robotics. The possibilities for chemistry now seem boundless, only constrained by the imagination of humans and/or robots who are going to have to learn to live, work, and play together. As self-driving laboratories further develop, it is worth asking how this will impact the nature of chemistry research and direct innovation in the chemical sciences in the long-term.
See full article at Advanced Science News.

Net zero emissions by 2050 was a target set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to increase our changes of limiting global temperature rise to under 1.5 °C. But how feasible is this in practice? Absolute Zero, a recent report laid out by British researchers, argues that the 2050 target can only be achieved via large-scale implementation of tried and trusted technologies, such as solar, wind, and geothermal power. Newer, riskier approaches, such as those based on hydrogen, bioenergy, and carbon capture, will likely require longer than 30 years to develop, deploy, and scale, and therefore may not be suitable for meeting short-term emission targets.
See full article at Advanced Science News.

PhD Candidate Mireille Ghoussoub placed first in the Three Minute Thesis Competition at the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) National Conference over the weekend. Her research focuses on merging experimental and computational characterization tools to study catalysts for converting carbon dioxide into methanol.
The WISE National Conference serves as a catalyst to inspire and empower individuals to pursue their passions, broaden their horizons, and form meaningful connections. The conference brings together delegates from all across Canada to share ideas and become inspired over the course of a two-day event dedicated to professional and personal growth, featuring inspirational leaders from a wide range of STEM fields, as well as workshops, case competitions, and career fairs.

Making financial policy a centerpiece for governments, businesses, and partnerships is a critical piece to achieving a net-zero economy. A challenge in this, however, is to build comprehensive transparency by all climate stakeholders on climate change, risk management, and investment to help companies deal with the financial stress associated with the potentially disruptive effects of a global energy transition.
See full article at Advanced Science News.

In addition to being an important element in living organisms, silicon is by far the most widely used of all semiconductor materials. Most recently, however, nano-silicon has been demonstrated to be an attractive tool in the field of environmental remediation, specifically when it comes to cleaning up oil spills from underwater drilling and hydraulic fracking. Here, the notable advance is that surface-engineered porous nano-silicon sponges demonstrate a strong affinity for emulsified oil in seawater.
See full article at Advanced Science News.