Development of a Plasma Electrochemical System for the Direct Conversion Air to Ammonia

Assistant Professor 

Department of Chemistry

University at Buffalo

Climate change is a significant challenge that is already affecting our current generation and will likely impact future generations as well. To mitigate global temperature rise, we must develop new systems for producing and storing clean energy, thereby reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. In this context, electrochemical reactions have emerged as a leading approach for addressing energy conversion and storage challenges. 

In this talk, I will present some of the latest electrochemical reactor designs from our research group to explore the electrochemical conversion and storage of small molecules. While recent advancements in electrochemical reactions have enabled many processes, certain reactions, such as nitrogen reduction (NRR), methane oxidation, and polymer upcycling, remain difficult to achieve using current electrochemical systems. To address this, our group has developed a plasma-assisted electrochemical reactor, offering a new opportunity to advance electrochemical transformations. By employing non-thermal plasma operating at room temperature and pressure, it becomes possible to generate hot electrons with sufficient energy for various bond dissociation reactions, including breaking the nitrogen triple bond. Our plasma electrochemical reactor was able to demonstrate continuous ammonia synthesis at greater than 2A current for 1000+ hours. 

In a second part of this part, I will also discuss effort in our group to design analytical instruments for studying temperature dependent thermodynamic of electrochemical reaction and education purposes. 

Prof. Chris Li is currently an Assistant Professor at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Chris received his BS degree from the University of California, Davis. Chris also worked as an R&D engineer in chemical industries for three years before starting his PhD in Chemistry (2013 - 2018) at Pennsylvania State with Prof. Tom Mallouk. From 2018 – 2020, Chris joined Prof. Ted Sargent’s group as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Toronto.

At the University at Buffalo, SUNY, Chris’ research group focus on developing electroanalytical techniques to study chemical mechanisms in electrocatalysis reactions, and reactor design for energy storage and environmental applications. Chris has been nominated as the 2024 Rising Star in Energy and Fuels, 2025 Cottrell Scholar, Chris is currently an editorial board member for Communications Chemistry.