Amanda Oldacre, assistant professor of chemistry, recently had a paper published in the journal RSC Advances.
The paper titled, "Electrochemical proton-coupled electron transfer of an anthracene-based azo dye" was co-authored by Elizabeth R. Young, assistant professor of chemistry at Lehigh University, who was Oldacre's post-doctoral advisor and principal investigator on this project.
The work that Oldacre and Young were doing was an effort to understand what fundamentally controls charge transfer, specifically proton-coupled electron transfer.
"We are trying to better understand the mechanisms behind processes that use molecules or catalysts to turn chemical energy into electricity, such as in solar panels or hydrogen fuel cells whose only byproduct is water," said Oldacre. "We made a molecule, similar to some clothing dyes, that shows it might be possible to make molecules that can move these charges at the same time, which would be very efficient."
"As well as making solar panels or hydrogen fuel cells more efficient, this ability could help us make catalysts to produce fertilizer more efficiently since our current method of making fertilizer is solely responsible for about 2% of the world's total energy consumption. With this ability, we might even be able to efficiently break down hydrocarbons to get hydrogen gas to use in hydrogen fuel cells," she said.
Oldacre is in her first year at St. Lawrence after receiving her Ph.D. in chemistry from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2018. She received her bachelor's degree from Niagara University in 2014. She has been teaching General Chemistry, Chemistry and Environment, and Environmental Chemistry.
