The investigation of direct acid reduction: the implications for hydrogen-evolving catalysis (2014)

Undergraduates: Daniel Martin, Brian McCarthy

Faculty Advisor: Jillian Dempsey
Department: Chemistry

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The investigation of direct acid reduction is an essential requirement in order to better understand and represent the effectiveness of organometallic catalysts that serve to evolve hydrogen from aqueous solutions. Utilizing a combination of metal-derived catalysts and electrical stimulation to evolve hydrogen from an acidic system has the potential to provide insight in the production of hydrogen, an attractively clean fuel. The means by which this is approached requires a variety of synthetic and electrochemical techniques. Cyclic voltammetry was the primary technique in analyzing these complexes. Preliminary electrochemical data revealed, however, a potential source of error previously uninvestigated and unaccounted for that skewed quantitative results. As such, the effect of direct acid reduction on glassy carbon electrodes was evaluated such that future catalytic studies can account for alternative sources of error.