VERMEER · Visualizing Electrochemical Reactions and Morphologies with Excitation, Emission and Reflection

Electrochemistry offers sustainable alternatives to industrial processes including the conversion of carbon dioxide. Realizing these transformations at scale requires designing electrodes that promote these reactions more efficiently. These designs have increasingly focused on tuning structure and morphology, as exemplified with the conversion of carbon dioxide on gold electrodes. On these materials, nanoscale structures such as nanoparticles and nanoneedles are reported to enhance electrochemistry dramatically. Still, reactivity at these sites is often impossible to observe directly. This ambiguity obscures how certain electrodes and morphologies promote reactions and prevents the rational design of more efficient catalysts. Techniques that resolve structure and function at the smallest scale are therefore required to advance electrochemistry and sustainable energy. Among these approaches is single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM).SMLM resolves the nanoscale world through the excitation and emission of visible light from bespoke molecular probes. These techniques have revealed biological and chemical phenomena with nanometre resolution. This proposal will extend SMLM to electrochemistry and interrogate carbon dioxide conversion on gold electrodes of various morphologies. These studies will incorporate redox-active, pH-sensitive, and carbon monoxide-sensitive probes in a liquid flow cell to visualize electrochemistry and reveal how competing reactions localize across different nanoscale structures. This methodology leverages SMLM to visualize active sites on gold electrodes and can be extended to various electrochemical reactions and catalysts. Furthermore, by pinpointing where chemistry occurs, these studies will guide the design of next-generation electrodes and more efficient electrochemical reactions. Together, these efforts will advance the ambitions of electrochemistry and help move energy and chemical industries toward a more sustainable future.