Research led by Martin Thuo, associate professor of Iowa State University‘s materials science and engineering, in collaboration with Aaron Rossini, assistant professor of chemistry, was featured on the cover of ACS Materials Letters’ September issue.
The image is from a paper titled “Synthesis of Interface-Driven Tunable Bandgap Metal Oxides” that details new techniques that use engineered surfaces and reactions to create self-assembled, mixed-band, tunable semiconductor materials.
Thuo’s research group demonstrated a two-step process of synthesizing a coordination polymer precursor, which autonomously self-assembles into layered nanomaterials, followed by thermal ablation that forms a mesoporous, carbon-coated metal-oxide.
“This illustrates the power of frugal engineering, especially use of autonomous processes. We illustrate high selectivity for reduction of CO2, pointing to potential of these materials in greenhouse gas reduction or analogous processes,” said Thuo.