Congratulations to Dr. Samira Siahrostami, PhD, on her recently published paper

 

Precious Metal-Free Nickel Nitride Catalyst for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction

In this work, Dr. Siahrostami and her collaborators from Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory for the first time studied the activity and stability of Nickel Nitride (Ni3N and Ni4N) for oxygen reduction reaction, the bottleneck reaction in proton-exchanged fuel cells and metal-air batteries. Transition metal nitrides have attracted particular attention for oxygen reduction reaction as alternative non-platinum group catalysts. Dr. Siahrostami and her collaborators took a combined computational (ab initio density function theory calculations) and experimental (in and ex situ characterization) approach to shed light on the structure of Nickel Nitride surface during oxygen reduction reaction catalysis. Their results show that under reaction condition a thin layer of oxide grows on the surface of Nickel Nitride. This thin oxide layer on nitrides has been demonstrated to be the active phase for oxygen reduction reaction by sole theoretical calculations in previous publication by Dr. Siahrostami and her co-workers. Read the full publication here.