Two University of Virginia faculty members – chemist Huiyuan Zhu and physicist Peter Schauss – have been named Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellows for 2023.
Zhu, an assistant professor with the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, is a leader in the search for clean energy technology and the third member of the College’s Department of Chemistry to be named a Sloan Research Fellow in the past three years. Schauss’ pioneering work with quantum gas microscopes has been widely credited with advancing the techniques used to study and manipulate atomic realms in ultra-cold quantum gases.
Zhu and Schauss are two of 125 scientists selected to receive this year’s fellowship. One of the most prestigious awards available to young U.S. and Canadian researchers, these two-year, $75,000 fellowships are awarded annually to early career researchers identified for distinguished records of performance and their potential to make substantial contributions in their fields.
The Chemistry of Clean Energy
Zhu, as head of the College’s Nano Energy and Environmental Catalysis Lab, is focused on the science behind the production and use of clean energy and on environmental remediation. In the U.S. today, the energy and chemical industries are based primarily on the use of fossil fuels that must be converted to usable forms, a process that produces greenhouse gases harmful to the environment. With her team of researchers, Zhu is working to develop solutions that make chemical and fuel production more environmentally friendly and affordable using renewable energy.
“Everything we do is related to developing new catalytic processes for fuel and chemical production powered by clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar that are available to us today,” Zhu said.
The technology necessary to convert sunlight into electricity has developed rapidly, but inefficiencies in the storage and distribution of that power and the cost of generating it have remained a significant problem.
One source of solar energy is derived from splitting water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen produced by the process is stored as fuel in a form that can be transferred from one place to another and used to generate power upon demand.
A catalyst is needed to split the water molecules, but current catalytic materials are not efficient enough to make the process practical.
“If you use the appropriate catalyst, we can split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen,” Zhu said. “The hydrogen can be used as a fuel source, and in this process, there is no CO2 emission at all.”
Another significant drawback of an energy infrastructure based on petrochemicals is that it produces approximately 925 metric tons of carbon dioxide or more than 2 million pounds per year. Current practices use reactions to produce hydrogen, but at the same time “it generates a tremendous amount of CO2,” Zhu said.
Her research in developing new chemical pathways for producing green hydrogen could transform the energy industry in as little as five years.
Zhu is also focused on the industrial production of ammonia, an important ingredient in the fertilizers used to produce food for the world’s growing population. The production process generates as much as three tons of CO2 per ton of ammonia produced.
Overfertilization of crops in the agriculture industry leads to the runoff of ammonia, the primary source of nitrate pollution in our groundwater, and Zhu’s group is looking for chemical solutions to reclaim ammonia from contaminated water so it can be used again for fertilizer production.
Her work in reclaiming ammonia from nitrates has also won Zhu one of the National Science Foundation’s coveted CAREER awards, which recognize the country’s most promising junior faculty members in the sciences and engineering. The award will provide additional funding for Zhu’s lab and will support educational and outreach efforts designed to encourage an interest in the STEM fields and in the science of sustainability in K-12 students.
Zhu’s receipt of the Sloan is further evidence of the importance of UVA’s green hydrogen research efforts.
“Our faculty are at the forefront of chemical research, and awards such as the Sloan Fellows demonstrate the elite level of research happening in the chemistry department and the College of Arts & Sciences,” said Jill Venton, chair of the College’s Department of Chemistry. “We recruited professor Zhu last year because of her leading research in nanomaterials and she has instantly become a key part of the energy and catalysis initiatives, including the Grand Challenge in Environmental Resilience and Sustainability and an Energy Earthshots grant from the Department of Energy.”
Exploring the Quantum Realm
From his time as a graduate student in Germany, Peter Schauss has pioneered the use of quantum gas microscopes to detect individual atoms. Now in his fifth year as an assistant professor of physics at UVA, Schauss is internationally recognized for his work with ultra-cold quantum gases and in quantum many-body physics, or the study of the behavior of ensembles of interacting quantum particles.
“Being named a Sloan Fellow is an incredible honor. It opens the door to so many possibilities,” said Schauss, who maintains his lab for ultracold quantum matter research in the College’s Physical and Life Sciences Research Building.
“Peter is extremely talented,” said Despina Louca, UVA’s Maxine S. and Jesse W. Beams Professor of Physics and chair of the College’s Department of Physics. “The Department of Physics is very proud of his accomplishments and is very happy to have someone of his caliber here.”
The development of quantum gas microscopes has enabled Schauss and other researchers to explore a broader range of physics.
“We can actually see every single atom and tell on which site of the array it sits,” Schauss said. “From the resulting pictures, we can extract information about the physics of many-electron systems, because the fermionic atoms act very similar to electrons. Such systems are very challenging to calculate on traditional computers, and the experiment can simulate systems that are out of reach for exact calculations.”
His lab relies on techniques of laser-cooling and atom trapping that bring atoms into the quantum regime at a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero. By loading ultracold atoms into optical lattices, formed by high-power lasers, Schauss and his team can achieve defect-free lattice structures that more aptly portray how electrons they organize and form patterns on a lattice.
With additional funding, Schauss hopes to launch new experiments that rely on quantum computing. Quantum computers consist of quantum bits, or “qubits” that play a similar role to the bits in digital computers. A single atom can act as a qubit, and an ensemble of qubits can encode exponentially more information than bits. By manipulating the qubits, scientists aim to develop quantum computers that produce solutions to difficult problems faster than even the largest supercomputers.
“That will require us to attract additional funding, but the recognition of a Sloan Research Fellowship will help our chances there,” Schauss said.
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Article Information
December 22, 2024
