3. Environment + Chemistry?

Nowadays more and more chemistry labs are focusing on the environmental issues. Among them, my particular interest lies in 1) solving plastic problems and 2) Sustainable energy conversion and storage. Let me briefly elaborate the reasons why I got interested in them.

1) Solving plastic problems

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I cannot remember exactly when I first encountered with the pictures and videos of plastic mountains in the forest and enormous plastic islands floating on the ocean. After shocked by the plastic island, I have been continuously irritated by lots of plastic products especially take-out cups from cafes near the bus stops and on the trash cans (not in the can!) all around the campus. I can convince that many educated citizens as well as university students recognize the severity of plastic problems. But, since trash cans full of plastics have been always removed to somewhere by cleaning operatives, we tend to use convenient plastic cups without guilty. Then, what can I do to end this vicious cycle as a chemist?

- New kinds of plastics which do not harm the eco-system

- The ways to clear existing microplastics without harmful effect to nature.

2) Shift from the fossil fuels to the sustainable energy conversion and storage

Ever since the speed and the amount of CO2 emission excel those of nature’s self-purifying ability, the earth’s temperature has been risen so fast. Thus, many nations have been put a lot of effort to reduce the CO2 emission by less depending on fossil fuels and finding alternatives such as utilizing renewable energy. One of the spectacular developments is that we can produce electricity using solar, wind and wave energy. However, the weak point of using those energy is that the supply is not constant according to the time, place and weather. Thus, efficient energy storage is necessary to meet the demand of people and hence, have practical value. That is why energy storage devices such as capacitors and batteries have been researched widely nowadays. Also, storing energy in form of Hydrogen gas is efficient to store high-dense energy. Thus, there are also lots of on-going research in hydrogen evolution catalyst and water oxidation-reduction catalysts.

- Safety problems of Metal ions battery (SEI, solvent, dendrite, etc.)

Reducing the price of electrodes (using non-noble metal or carbon-based)

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