Professor Laurie King
Professor
Material chemist working on sustainable and clean energy technologies
My profile
Biography
I am a Material Chemist working in the field of electrocatalysis and electrochemical storage and conversion technologies. Our research is focused on developing new materials and fundamental understanding to develop clean, sustainable and green technologies for a Net Zero future. More specifically, our research group is focused on the design, discovery and characterisation of new materials and catalyst motifs. In particular, we are interested in characterising these materials in fuel cells and electrolysers. This involves nanoparticle synthesis as well as extensive materials and electrochemical characterisation. Our work is highly collaboratively, and we currently work theoreticians, beamline scientists, microscopists, engineers and more.
Interests and expertise
- Electrocatalysis and photoelectrochemistry
- Water splitting (electrolysis), carbon dioxide reduction reaction, ground water remediation
- Nano-material synthesis and characterisation
- Energy storage and conversion technologies
Impact
Policy and Roundtable Engagement
- Invited to give remarks discussing priorities for net zero and sustainability at a Policy Connect Sustainability Reception at the UK Parliament, 23rd Feb 2022
- Technical expert to All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group (APPCCG) on the topic of hydrogen fuel cells for decarbonisation of transportation in the UK. (March – October 2020).
- Published essay with MP Alexander Stafford titled “Achieving Net Zero Emissions from the UK Transport Sector by 2050: The role of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles” as part of the APPCCG Net Zero Exchanges: Connecting policy and research for climate action.
- Technical Reviewer for the Henry Royce Institute “Materials for the Energy Transition Roadmap: Materials for low-carbon production of hydrogen and related energy carriers and chemical feedstocks”. March – July 2020.
Committee Membership
- Royce Electrochemical Systems Steering Group - 2022 - present
- UK Catalysis Hub Committee on Catalysis for Net Zero - 2022 - present
- Royal Society of Chemistry Local Section Manchester & District - Secretary 2020 - 2022
Expert Peer Reviewer
- Peer Reviewer for numerous journals including: Nature, Nature Communications, Joule-Chem, ACS Catalysis, ACS Appl. Mater. Inter., ACS Omega, Electrochim. Acta, Electrochem. Commun. etc
- Member of the Associate College of EPSRC Reviewers (2021 – onwards)
- Regular peer reviewer for EPSRC
- Invited peer reviewer for Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) - US Department of Energy (DoE) Office of Science.
Membership of Professional Associations
- Member of Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC)
Projects
Overview
Research in the King Lab is focused on the design, synthesis and characterisation of materials and catalysts with interesting and unique properties for applications in renewable energy conversion and storage technologies. Our work is motivated by the need to design a more sustainable and green future. Our research is highly collaborative, engaging with numerous industrial and academic partners and lies at the interface of chemistry, materials science and physics.
Primary Research Themes
- Catalyst design and discovery
- Characterisation of heterogeneous catalysts
- Electrolysis & fuel cell technologies
- Electrosynthesis of alternative fuels & commodity chemicals
Research Background
Electrocatalysis are central to numerous energy conversion and storage technologies. Our approach is to explore fundamental understanding of materials and catalysts to drive the discovery of catalysts with enhnaced activity, selectivity and durability.
Interested in working with us?
We are always interested in hearing from highly motivated students, researchers as well as industry who would like to discuss research opportunities (funded and self-funded) and collaborations.
Teaching
Undergraduate & MSc Teaching
Chemistry & Society 2 - We focus on semiconductors and solar cells in my portion of the course. We seek to explore 1) how a solar cell works, 2) how solar cells are manufactured in industry and research labs today, and 3) how to understand the performance of a solar cell (e.g. how efficient is a solar cell?). This course is an excellent opportunity for students to learn about technologies that is essential for the globe to reduce our carbon emissions and meet renewable energy targets.
Frontiers (MChem) & Energy Materials (MSc Advanced Materials). In this course we discuss next-generation energy storage and conversion technologies. Specifically, we discuss the challenges and opportunities of energy production technologies (from fossil fuels to renewables to green hydrogen). Primarily, we focus on energy technologies that provide transformative routes to large-scale decarbonisation of energy. From batteries, to supercapacitors and fuel cells, we will discuss how these technologies work, how to effectively compare technologies to each other, and the materials that are used essential to their operation. This course provides students with the required knowledge to understand how our future energy and electricity requirements will meet Net Zero requirements.
Bulk Characterisation (MSc Advanced Materials). This course provides an in depth discussion to enable students to gain an expert understanding of numerous bulk characterisation techniques. Specifically, in my portion of the class I will teach x-ray diffraction (XRD) and secondary electron microscopy (SEM). The course is designed to incorporate numerous research examples so that students become familiar with interpretating and assessing data in industry and academia.
Physical Chemistry Labs (Second year). All second year Chemists join us to apply prior physical chemistry knowledge in the laboratory. From kinetics, thermodynamics and surface chemistry we give students a broad and wide ranging experience of applying theory. Beyond our work together in the lab, learning to produce high quality figures and interpret findings is an essential learning outcome for your future careers - no matter which profession you pursue.
BSc, MChem, MSc. Interested in understanding materials and how we can apply our knowledge for a green and sustainable future? Research projects are available for motivated students who want to learn to synthesise advanced functional nano-materials as well as materials and electrochemical characterisations. We work with students across all levels of their study, from BSc projects and summer internships, through to PhDs and Postdoctoral positions.
Why study Advanced Materials?
Materials are all around us with numerous applications spanning almost all of our world. From medical devices, paints, polymers to renewable energy technologies, materials play a critical role in our society. Through the study of materials chemistry, you can learn how to synthesise and characterise the materials to understand how to design new generation technologies and solutions for our ever evolving planet. The topic is extremely multidisciplinary, with scientists from all areas of STEM engaging together. Owing to the significant application of materials, there are numerous strong ties to industry from academia.
Supervision
MRes and PhD Project Supervision
Want to undertake cutting edge research that will contribute to CO2 reductions? Our research group is always seeking highly motivated and enthusiastic students interested in MRes or PhD programmes. From water splitting (hydrogen production) to carbon dioxide reduction and ground water remediation technologies, our work is focused primarily on the synthesis and characterisation of electrocatalysts for both lab-scale and commercially relevant device testing. Please get in contact if you are interested in working with us!
PhD Students
- Debora Belami (2020 - present)
- James Waggett (2022 - present) - iCASE award with Johnson Matthey
MSc Project Students
- Jake Farrell (2021)
- Daisy Geary (2022)
UG Summer Research Students (paid positions)
- Rebekah Luff (2022)
- Rachel Luson (2022)
- Umar Khayat Khan (2022)
- Lauren Paszczuk (2021)
- Amy Clarke (2021)
- Fahmida Begum (2021)
- Sam Lennard (2020 - 2022)
Research outputs
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Chapters in books
King, L.A., Kern, M.E., Parkinson, B.A. (2015) 'Sensitization of Single Crystal Substrates.' ACS Symposium Series. pp. 1-45.
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Journal articles
Masnica, J.P., Sibt-e-Hassan, S., Potgieter-Vermaak, S., Regmi, Y.N., King, L.A., Tosheva, L. (2023) 'ZIF-8-derived Fe-C catalysts: relationship between structure and catalytic activity toward the oxygen reduction reaction.' Green Carbon, 1(2) pp. 160-169.
King, L.A., Regmi, Y.N. (2022) 'Precious-metal-free catalyst could afford cost-effective green hydrogen.' Chem, 8(6) pp. 1539-1540.
Hubert, M.A., Gallo, A., Liu, Y., Valle, E., Sanchez, J., Sokaras, D., Sinclair, R., King, L.A., Jaramillo, T.F. (2022) 'Characterization of a Dynamic Y2Ir2O7 Catalyst during the Oxygen Evolution Reaction in Acid.' The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 126(4) pp. 1751-1760.
Ben-Naim, M., Aldridge, C.W., Steiner, M.A., Britto, R.J., Nielander, A.C., King, L.A., Deutsch, T.G., Young, J.L., Jaramillo, T.F. (2022) 'Engineering Surface Architectures for Improved Durability in III–V Photocathodes.' ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 14(18) pp. 20385-20392.
Hubert, M.A., King, L.A., Jaramillo, T.F. (2021) 'Evaluating the Case for Reduced Precious Metal Catalysts in Proton Exchange Membrane Electrolyzers.' ACS Energy Letters, 7(1) pp. 17-23.
Wang, L., Peng, H., Lamaison, S., Qi, Z., Koshy, D.M., Stevens, M.B., Wakerley, D., Zamora Zeledón, J.A., King, L.A., Zhou, L., Lai, Y., Fontecave, M., Gregoire, J., Abild-Pedersen, F., Jaramillo, T.F., Hahn, C. (2021) 'Bimetallic effects on Zn-Cu electrocatalysts enhance activity and selectivity for the conversion of CO2 to CO.' Chem Catalysis, 1(3) pp. 663-680.
Sanchez, J., Stevens, M.B., Young, A.R., Gallo, A., Zhao, M., Liu, Y., Ramos-Garcés, M.V., Ben-Naim, M., Colón, J.L., Sinclair, R., King, L.A., Bajdich, M., Jaramillo, T.F. (2021) 'Isolating the Electrocatalytic Activity of a Confined NiFe Motif within Zirconium Phosphate.' Advanced Energy Materials, 11(20) pp. 2003545-2003545.
Stevens, M.B., Kreider, M.E., Patel, A.M., Wang, Z., Liu, Y., Gibbons, B.M., Statt, M.J., Ievlev, A.V., Sinclair, R., Mehta, A., Davis, R.C., Nørskov, J.K., Gallo, A., King, L.A., Jaramillo, T.F. (2020) 'Identifying and Tuning the In Situ Oxygen-Rich Surface of Molybdenum Nitride Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Reduction.' ACS Applied Energy Materials, 3(12) pp. 12433-12446.
Regmi, Y.N., Tzanetopoulos, E., Zeng, G., Peng, X., Kushner, D.I., Kistler, T.A., King, L.A., Danilovic, N. (2020) 'Supported Oxygen Evolution Catalysts by Design: Toward Lower Precious Metal Loading and Improved Conductivity in Proton Exchange Membrane Water Electrolyzers.' ACS Catalysis, 10(21) pp. 13125-13135.
Hubert, M.A., Patel, A.M., Gallo, A., Liu, Y., Valle, E., Ben-Naim, M., Sanchez, J., Sokaras, D., Sinclair, R., Nørskov, J.K., King, L.A., Bajdich, M., Jaramillo, T.F. (2020) 'Acidic Oxygen Evolution Reaction Activity–Stability Relationships in Ru-Based Pyrochlores.' ACS Catalysis, 10(20) pp. 12182-12196.
Chen, G., Stevens, M.B., Liu, Y., King, L.A., Park, J., Kim, T.R., Sinclair, R., Jaramillo, T.F., Bao, Z. (2020) 'Nanosized Zirconium Porphyrinic Metal–Organic Frameworks that Catalyze the Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Acid.' Small Methods, 4(10) pp. 2000085-2000085.
Ben-Naim, M., Britto, R.J., Aldridge, C.W., Mow, R., Steiner, M.A., Nielander, A.C., King, L.A., Friedman, D.J., Deutsch, T.G., Young, J.L., Jaramillo, T.F. (2020) 'Addressing the Stability Gap in Photoelectrochemistry: Molybdenum Disulfide Protective Catalysts for Tandem III–V Unassisted Solar Water Splitting.' ACS Energy Letters, 5(8) pp. 2631-2640.
McEnaney, J.M., Rohr, B.A., Nielander, A.C., Singh, A.R., King, L.A., Nørskov, J.K., Jaramillo, T.F. (2020) 'A cyclic electrochemical strategy to produce acetylene from CO2, CH4, or alternative carbon sources.' Sustainable Energy & Fuels, 4(6) pp. 2752-2759.
Kreider, M.E., Stevens, M.B., Liu, Y., Patel, A.M., Statt, M.J., Gibbons, B.M., Gallo, A., Ben-Naim, M., Mehta, A., Davis, R.C., Ievlev, A.V., Nørskov, J.K., Sinclair, R., King, L.A., Jaramillo, T.F. (2020) 'Nitride or Oxynitride? Elucidating the Composition–Activity Relationships in Molybdenum Nitride Electrocatalysts for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction.' Chemistry of Materials, 32(7) pp. 2946-2960.
Ben-Naim, M., Palm, D.W., Strickler, A.L., Nielander, A.C., Sanchez, J., King, L.A., Higgins, D.C., Jaramillo, T.F. (2020) 'A Spin Coating Method To Deposit Iridium-Based Catalysts onto Silicon for Water Oxidation Photoanodes.' ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 12(5) pp. 5901-5908.
Aykol, M., Hummelshøj, J.S., Anapolsky, A., Aoyagi, K., Bazant, M.Z., Bligaard, T., Braatz, R.D., Broderick, S., Cogswell, D., Dagdelen, J., Drisdell, W., Garcia, E., Garikipati, K., Gavini, V., Gent, W.E., Giordano, L., Gomes, C.P., Gomez-Bombarelli, R., Balaji Gopal, C., Gregoire, J.M., Grossman, J.C., Herring, P., Hung, L., Jaramillo, T.F., King, L., Kwon, H.K., Maekawa, R., Minor, A.M., Montoya, J.H., Mueller, T., Ophus, C., Rajan, K., Ramprasad, R., Rohr, B., Schweigert, D., Shao-Horn, Y., Suga, Y., Suram, S.K., Viswanathan, V., Whitacre, J.F., Willard, A.P., Wodo, O., Wolverton, C., Storey, B.D. (2019) 'The Materials Research Platform: Defining the Requirements from User Stories.' Matter, 1(6) pp. 1433-1438.
King, L.A., Hubert, M.A., Capuano, C., Manco, J., Danilovic, N., Valle, E., Hellstern, T.R., Ayers, K., Jaramillo, T.F. (2019) 'A non-precious metal hydrogen catalyst in a commercial polymer electrolyte membrane electrolyser.' Nature Nanotechnology, 14(11) pp. 1071-1074.
Gauthier, J.A., King, L.A., Stults, F.T., Flores, R.A., Kibsgaard, J., Regmi, Y.N., Chan, K., Jaramillo, T.F. (2019) 'Transition Metal Arsenide Catalysts for the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction.' The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 123(39) pp. 24007-24012.
Sanchez, J., Hellstern, T.R., King, L.A., Jaramillo, T.F. (2019) 'Surface Engineering of 3D Gas Diffusion Electrodes for High‐Performance H2 Production with Nonprecious Metal Catalysts.' Advanced Energy Materials, 9(40) pp. 1901824-1901824.
Strickler, A.L., Flores, R.A., King, L.A., Nørskov, J.K., Bajdich, M., Jaramillo, T.F. (2019) 'Systematic Investigation of Iridium-Based Bimetallic Thin Film Catalysts for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction in Acidic Media..' ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 11(37) pp. 34059-34066.
Kreider, M.E., Gallo, A., Back, S., Liu, Y., Siahrostami, S., Nordlund, D., Sinclair, R., Nørskov, J.K., King, L.A., Jaramillo, T.F. (2019) 'Precious Metal-Free Nickel Nitride Catalyst for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction..' ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 11(30) pp. 26863-26871.
Hellstern, T.R., Nielander, A.C., Chakthranont, P., King, L.A., Willis, J.J., Xu, S., MacIsaac, C., Hahn, C., Bent, S.F., Prinz, F.B., Jaramillo, T.F. (2019) 'Nanostructuring Strategies To Increase the Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting Activity of Silicon Photocathodes.' ACS Applied Nano Materials, 2(1) pp. 6-11.
King, L.A., Hellstern, T.R., Park, J., Sinclair, R., Jaramillo, T.F. (2017) 'Highly Stable Molybdenum Disulfide Protected Silicon Photocathodes for Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting.' ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 9(42) pp. 36792-36798.
Regmi, Y.N., Roy, A., King, L.A., Cullen, D.A., Meyer, H.M., Goenaga, G.A., Zawodzinski, T.A., Labbé, N., Chmely, S.C. (2017) 'Lattice Matched Carbide–Phosphide Composites with Superior Electrocatalytic Activity and Stability.' Chemistry of Materials, 29(21) pp. 9369-9377.
Hellstern, T.R., Kibsgaard, J., Tsai, C., Palm, D.W., King, L.A., Abild-Pedersen, F., Jaramillo, T.F. (2017) 'Investigating Catalyst–Support Interactions To Improve the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Activity of Thiomolybdate [Mo3S13]2– Nanoclusters.' ACS Catalysis, 7(10) pp. 7126-7130.
Kubie, L., King, L.A., Kern, M.E., Murphy, J.R., Kattel, S., Yang, Q., Stecher, J.T., Rice, W.D., Parkinson, B.A. (2017) 'Synthesis and Characterization of Ultrathin Silver Sulfide Nanoplatelets.' ACS Nano, 11(8) pp. 8471-8477.
King, L.A., Parkinson, B.A. (2017) 'Probing the Relative Photoinjection Yields of Monomer and Aggregated Dyes into ZnO Crystals..' Langmuir: the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids, 33(2) pp. 468-474.
King, L.A., Yang, Q., Grossett, M.L., Galazka, Z., Uecker, R., Parkinson, B.A. (2016) 'Photosensitization of Natural and Synthetic SnO
2 Single Crystals with Dyes and Quantum Dots.' Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 120(29) pp. 15735-15742.King, L.A., Parkinson, B.A. (2016) 'Photosensitization of ZnO Crystals with Iodide-Capped PbSe Quantum Dots.' Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 7(14) pp. 2844-2848.
King, L.A., Zhao, W., Danos, L., Riley, D.J. (2014) 'Activation of CdSe quantum dots after exposure to polysulfide.' Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 118(26) pp. 14555-14561.
King, L.A., Zhao, W., Chhowalla, M., Riley, D.J., Eda, G. (2013) 'Photoelectrochemical properties of chemically exfoliated MoS
2 .' Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 1(31) pp. 8935-8941.King, L.A., Riley, D.J. (2012) 'Importance of QD purification procedure on surface adsorbance of QDs and performance of QD sensitized photoanodes.' Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 116(5) pp. 3349-3355.
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Non-peer reviewed articles / reviews
Regmi, Y., King, L. Importance of Catalysis for Achieving Net Zero.
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Conference papers
Regmi, Y., Lau, T., Decarolis, D., Beale, A., Ronning, M., King, L. (2023) 'Supported Iridium Catalysts for Water Electrolysers.' In 244th ECS Meeting. Gothenburg, Sweden, 8/10/2023 - 12/10/2023.
King, L.A. (2018) 'Electrocatalysis for sustainable energy storage and conversion.' pp. 195-197.
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Patents
Kreider, M.E., Burke Stevens, M., Gallo, A., Abroshan, H., Back, S., Siahrostami, S., Norskov, J.K., King, L.A., Jaramillo, T.F. (2020) Oxidized Surface Layer on Transition Metal Nitrides: Active Catalysts for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction.
Press and media
Media appearances or involvement
- Expert interviewee invited by BBC 4 “The Bottom Line” to discuss the “Hydrogen Future” aired on Thursday 18th March 2021.