Our drinking water resources are safe enough? Urban and Environmental Engineering, UNIST Kyunghwa Cho Our drinking water is constantly being threatened. If so, can't the current level of science and technology be able to eliminate these substances? Not like that. Currently, these contaminants can be removed through...
Complex, three dimensional (3D) assemblies of micro/nanomaterials form naturally in biological systems, where they provide sophisticated function in even the most basic forms of life. In spite of their broad potential utility in man-made devices, design options for analogous abiotic 3D mesostructures are severely constrained...
Hyo-Ryoung Lim Major of Human Biocovergence, Division of Smart Healthcare, College of Information Technology and Convergence, Pukyong National University, Busan, Korea Monitoring electrolytes is critical for newborns and babies in the intensive care unit. However, the gold standard methods use a blood draw, which is painful and only offers...
Heterogeneous Atomic Catalysts Overcoming the Limitations of Single-Atom Catalysts Prof. Hyunjoo Lee Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South Korea Recent advances in heterogeneous single-atom catalysts (SACs), which have isolated metal atoms dispersed on a support, have enabled more precise control of their surface metal atomic structure. SACs could reduce the amount of metals used for the surface reaction, and have often shown unique selectivity, which the corresponding nanoparticles would not have. However, the SACs typically have the limitations of low metal content, poor stability, oxidic electronic states, and the absence of ensemble sites. Here, I will introduce our recent efforts to overcome these limitations. For instance, highly durable SACs could be prepared by anchoring the metal atoms strongly on the defective support, metallic SACs were synthesized, and the ensemble catalysts, in which all the metal atoms are exposed at the surface like the SACs but the surface metal atoms are located nearby, were also successfully synthesized. We applied these heterogeneous atomic catalysts for automobile exhaust treatment (three way catalyst; TWC or diesel oxidation catalyst; DOC) or electrochemical reactions (formic acid oxidation; FAOR or oxygen reduction reaction; ORR). Heterogeneous atomic catalysts, whose structure is elaborately controlled and the surface reaction is better understood, can be a new paradigm with higher catalytic activity, selectivity, and durability, and used in industrial applications....
The desire to maintain thermal loads acting on re-entry vehicles within acceptable limits drives numerous activities pertaining to research and development of thermal-protection materials. Metallic thermal-protection materials with low mass densities and life-cycle costs as well as greater strength to withstand thermal loads have been widely employed...
2D Semiconductor Electronics Toward Beyond-CMOS Technology Chul-Ho Lee1, 2 1KU-KIST Graduate School of Converging Science & Technology, 2Department of Integrative Energy Engineering, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have emerged as a promising material for implementing beyond-CMOS...
Biological production of 3-hydroxypropionic acid from glycerol Prof. Sunghoon Park Department of Energy and Chemical Engineering, UNIST, Korea 3-Hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP) is an attractive platform chemical that has diverse applications in the chemical industries for paint, polymer, and consumer products. It can be synthesized chemically or biologically, but its commercial production has not been realized due to many technical challenges. We have studied a biological process for last ~15 years and succeeded in its efficient production on 100 L pilot-scale as represented by a high titer (>100 g/L), rate (>3 g/L/h), and yield (>0.95 mol/mol glycerol or >0.7 mol 3-HP carbon/mol substrate carbon). The work includes the selection of proper host microorganisms, optimization of gene expression, enzyme engineering, deletion of competing and 3-HP degradation pathways, optimization of energy and cofactor metabolisms, transport, adaptive evolution, etc. The study was collaborated with a paint company in Korea, and commercialization including process development and scale-up is now underway. This lecture summarizes and discusses our long journey with 3-HP....
