Colloquium Series: Dr. Christopher Hendon, University of Oregon

Dr. Christopher Hendon

Associate Professor of Computational Material Chemistry

University of Oregon

Wednesday October 2, 2024, 4pm Venable Hall Rm. G311

Title: Hydrogenic defects in molecular materials

Abstract: 

Entropy drives the inclusion of defects during materials syntheses. Some defects are innocuous, while others may dramatically impact the bulk material properties. For materials formed from discrete molecular building blocks, most defects are formed through some complicated Lewis acid/base interactions. A subset of these interactions are those involving hydrogen atoms, as they should be present due to incomplete deprotonation of the organic acids. Yet, while these types of defects are known to exist in ZnO, TiO₂ and other solids, they are experimentally difficult to detect. In this talk we discuss the implications for H-atom defects in a family of molecular materials, and discuss chemical strategies to control and harness them for energy transfer applications.

Bio:

Prof. Christopher H. Hendon is a computational chemist studying energy storage and, separately, electrochemical processes in coffee. He obtained his bachelor’s degree from Monash University (2011, Melbourne, Australia) and PhD from the University of Bath (2015, United Kingdom). After a two-year postdoc at Massachusetts Institute of Technology he joined the University of Oregon in 2017 and is now an Associate Professor of Chemistry where his research group focuses on materials with useful defects. He has published over 125 papers, was named a Cottrell Scholar in 2021, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar in 2022, the Samuel R. Scholes Jnr. Lecture for excellence in scientific communication and has been awarded the Rippey Award for Innovative Teaching twice. In coffee, he authored, “Water For Coffee”, and has written numerous peer-reviewed articles on the topic.