Bailey Group research earns grant from ACS Petroleum Research Fund
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (5/10/2024) – The Bailey Group has been awarded a Doctoral New Investigator grant from the American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund to pursue their research on using copper chalcogenide clusters to support inert bond activation. The Petroleum Research Fund is an endowed fund managed by the ACS to support fundamental research directly related to petroleum or fossil fuels.
This novel research from the Bailey Group aims to examine the solution behavior, reactivity and dynamics of copper chalcogenide nanoclusters. These atomically precise platforms have the potential to lend insight into the pathways by which multimetallic active sites activate recalcitrant small molecules of energy relevance such as CO2 and CO. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop new, atomically precise catalyst platforms that incorporate multimetallic cooperativity for lower-energy and higher-selectivity electrocatalytic reduction of CO2 to valuable products such as formic acid, ethylene, and ethanol using renewable energy. “The efficient and green synthesis of these chemicals could lead to significant energy gains and decreased carbon footprint in the production of large-scale commodity chemicals,” Prof. Bailey says.
The Bailey Group, founded by Assistant Professor Gwendolyn Bailey in 2021, is an inorganic chemistry group focused on using synthesis, crystallography, and spectroscopy to solve problems related to clean energy and sustainable catalysis. The group is made up of four graduate students, one postdoctoral associate, and one undergraduate.
The Petroleum Research Fund was originally established as a Trust by seven major oil companies in 1944. The ACS, to whom the assets of the Fund were transferred in 2000, is charged with supporting “advanced scientific education and fundamental research in the petroleum field,” including any area of pure science that may lead to further research directly impacting petroleum. Fundamental research is currently supported in chemistry, the earth sciences, chemical and petroleum engineering, and in related fields such as polymers and materials science. For their copper chalcogenide nanocluster research, the Bailey Group was awarded $110,000.