Research Interests
The mission of the Wuttig group is to integrate renewable energy input into the synthesis of products across the chemical value chain by advancing the science underlying chemical reactivity at electrified interfaces.
Synthesis driven by renewable sources of electricity offers a sustainable, scalable, decentralized, and energy-efficient route to furnish value-added products – from fuels to complex molecules. The predictive design of efficient and selective electrosynthetic sequences, however, remains challenging due to the structural complexity of the unique added dimension inherent to all electrochemical systems: the electrified interface. Research in the Wuttig group focuses on strategies to address this challenge by leveraging interfacial self-assembly and electrode materials design to elucidate the impact of the interface on electron transfer events central to catalytic small and complex molecule activation. Our approach bridges the fields of inorganic and organic chemistry by drawing on synthetic and physical inorganic and organic tools to obtain a molecular-level understanding of interfacial structure, its manipulation, and its effects on electroorganic reactivity and electrochemical processes. The mechanistic understanding we uncover guides the development of new catalyst design principles to advance sustainable synthetic chemistry methodologies and energy conversion/storage systems.
Selected References
Chen, Q.C., Kress, S., Molinelli, R., Wuttig, A.* (2024). Interfacial Tuning of Electrocatalytic Ag Surfaces for Fragment-Based Electrophile Coupling. Nature Catalysis, DOI: 10.1038/s41929-023-01073-5.
Badgurjar, D., Huynh, M., Masters, B., Wuttig, A.* (2023). Non-Covalent Interactions Mimic the Covalent: An Electrode-Orthogonal Self-Assembled Layer. Journal of the American Chemical Society. 145, 32, 17734–17745.
Wuttig, A.,* Toste, F. D.* (2021). The interface is a tunable dimension in electricity-driven organic synthesis. Natural Sciences, 1 (2), e20210036.
Wuttig, A., Derrick, J. S., Loipersberger, M., Snider, A., Head-Gordon, M., Chang, C. J.,* Toste, F. D.* (2021). Controlled Single Electron Transfer via Metal-Ligand Cooperativity Drives Divergent Nickel Electrocatalyzed Radical Pathways. The Journal of the American Chemical Society, 143 (18), 6990–7001.
Wuttig, A., Yoon, Y., Ryu, J. & Surendranath, Y.* (2017). Bicarbonate is Not a General Acid in Au-Catalyzed CO2 Electroreduction. The Journal of the American Chemical Society, 139 (47), 17109-17113.
Wuttig, A., Liu, C., Peng, Q., Yaguchi, M., Hendon, C. H., Motobayashi, K., Shen, Y., Osawa, M. & Surendranath, Y.* (2016). Tracking a Common Surface-Bound Intermediate during CO2-to-Fuels Catalysis. ACS Central Science, 2 (8), 522-528.
Wuttig, A., Yaguchi, M., Motobayashi, K., Osawa, M. & Surendranath, Y.* (2016). Inhibited Proton Transfer Enhances Au-Catalyzed CO2-to-Fuels Selectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., 113 (32), E4585 – E4593.