Hydrogen Peroxide Synthesis in Physical Hole Defects of Graphene
Summary
Perform density functional theory calculations to determine transition states for the synthesis of hydrogen peroxide over physical hole defects in graphene. According to our calculations the size of the physical hole defect changes the acidity of adjacent OH-groups and this project seeks to explore that change in acidity as a function of the size of the physical hole defect for the production of H2O2 from O2.
Job Description
The student will: -Identify reaction intermediates -Use the Nudged Elastic Band method to determine transition states -Add their results to an existing manuscript that is being prepared for a peer-reviewed journal. The student will be a co-author on this article.
Computational Resources
A research supplement will be requested on Comet and some of those resources will be used for this project.
Contribution to Community
The student intended for this project is an underrepresented minority woman. This project will expand the participation of HPC training to to groups traditionally underrepresented in HPC.
Position Type
Apprentice
Training Plan
The student will regularly meet with the mentor once a week to present results and plan for the upcoming week. During these meetings we will discuss how to perform the calculations necessary to complete the tasks for the upcoming week. These meetings will be supplemented by ad-hoc meetings whenever the student needs guidance.
Training on how to use the density functional theory software will occur on our modest, local HPC cluster before transitioning to XSEDE resources for publication quality calculations.