MembersAlan Dai

My general research interests lie in studying catalysis and nanoparticles towards advances in clean and renewable energy. Plasmonic nanostructures in particular have shown promise as photocatalysts, directly converting solar to chemical energy. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a powerful tool for imaging these catalyst materials at the nanoscale, allowing us to correlate structural properties with catalyst activity, selectivity, and stability. Currently, I am working on performing chemical and optical characterization of plasmonic photocatalysts in the liquid-phase via TEM, in addition to studying bimetallic plasmonic nanoparticles for photocatalytic CO2 reduction.

Research Interests

• Photocatalysis 
• Transmission electron microscopy 
• Plasmonic materials

Carlin, C. C.; Dai, A. X.; Al-Zubeidi, A.; Simmerman, E. M.; Oh, H.; Gross, N.; Lee, S. A.; Link, S.; Landes, C. F.; da Jornada, F. H.; Dionne, J. A. Nanoscale and Ultrafast in Situ Techniques to Probe Plasmon Photocatalysis. Chemical Physics Reviews 2023, 4 (4), 041309. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0163354.

Vilá, R. A.; Boyle, D. T.; Dai, A.; Zhang, W.; Sayavong, P.; Ye, Y.; Yang, Y.; Dionne, J. A.; Cui, Y. LiH Formation and Its Impact on Li Batteries Revealed by Cryogenic Electron Microscopy. Science Advances 2023, 9 (12), eadf3609. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf3609.

Dionne, J., Moradifar, P. & Dai, A. Enhanced Emission for Improved Electron Spectroscopy. Physics 15, 189 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1103/Physics.15.189.

Sytwu, K.; Vadai, M.; Hayee, F.; Angell, D. K.; Dai, A.; Dixon, J.; Dionne, J. A. Driving Energetically Unfavorable Dehydrogenation Dynamics with Plasmonics. Science 2021, 371 (6526), 280–283. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abd2847.

Zhang, Q.; Hernandez, T.; Smith, K. W.; Hosseini Jebeli, S. A.; Dai, A. X.; Warning, L.; Baiyasi, R.; McCarthy, L. A.; Guo, H.; Chen, D.-H.; Dionne, J. A.; Landes, C. F.; Link, S. Unraveling the Origin of Chirality from Plasmonic Nanoparticle-Protein Complexes. Science 2019, 365 (6460), 1475–1478. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax5415.

Levin, J. R.; Dorfner, W. L.; Dai, A. X.; Carroll, P. J.; Schelter, E. J. Density Functional Theory as a Predictive Tool for Cerium Redox Properties in Nonaqueous Solvents. Inorg. Chem. 2016, 55 (24), 12651–12659. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.inorgchem.6b01779.