Verduzco Laboratory

Congratulations to Dr. Shu-Yan Jiang and Franchesca Semanat for receiving awards for their research presentation. Shu-Yan received the first-place poster award at the 2025 Southwest Catalysis Society Spring Symposium held at Rice University on May 2, 2025. Franchesca won first place at the SPE FlexPackCon 2025 meeting held at Rochester, NY from May 6 to May 9 2025. Congrats to both!

In an article recently published in Advanced Functional Materials in work led by Dr. Safiya Khalil, we studied materials for use in CO2 electrolyzers, which can convert CO2 into liquid chemicals, such as formic acid and acetate. This study looked at porous organic materials known as covalent organic frameworks (COFs). These materials are ideal for this application since they are stable under continuous water flow, they were charged and could transport protons, and could easily be packed into the CO2 electrolyzer. This was the first example of a COF used for this application. Read more here: https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202503204

In work led by Abdullah Alazmi, we studied porous silica particles as solid electrolytes for CO2 electrolysis, which is a technology for converting CO2 into useful products. Silica particles are low-cost solid materials that can be modified in order to introduce functionality such as ion transport. Abdullah showed that these particles served as excellent ion conductors and could be used in CO2 electrolyzers. This demonstrates a new approach to solid-state CO2 electrolysis, which has several advantages over tranditional CO2 electrolysis. Read more here: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.5c02283

Congratulations to Dr. Jeremy Daum for successfully defending his PhD thesis, entitled “COF and Effect: Covalent Organic Framework Applications Enabled by Scalable Synthesis.” Jeremy developed new processing methods for COFs, including a vapor deposition approach to make crystalline thin films, and he also studied photoactive COFs that can adsorb and degrade “forever chemicals” known as PFAS. He will continue this work as part of start-up company Coflux Purification, Inc. Congrats Jeremy and thanks for your hard work!

In Macromolecules, we report a study of polymeric membranes containing ion-specific chelating groups. These membranes were designed to bind selectively to Cu2+ even in the presence of other divalent cations Ni2+ and Mg2+. We showed that using these chelating groups, we could achieve selective Cu2+ permeation, demonstrating a membrane-based method for the recovery and separation of target ions. This opens up the possibility to designing membranes for the recovery of other ions and critical materials. Read more here: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.macromol.4c02927