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Fahrenkrug Lab

We're broadly interested in the confluence of materials science and electroanalytical chemistry. Motivating questions include: How can new devices and new materials be used to probe fundamental questions regarding non-Faradaic influences of electric fields on molecular and supramolecular crystallization? Or, how can unconventional methods like bipolar electrochemistry be exploited for combinatorial evaluation of new electrochemical synthetic pathways? The brief descriptions below provide some framework for projects of our exploration.

Research Projects

Electric Fields for Controlling Polymorph Crystallization

Tuning the way molecules arrange themselves in a crystal (i.e. polymorphism) affords control over the physical and chemical properties of the material. In the pharmaceutical industry, the specific polymorphic phase underpins all key attributes of drug solubility, bioavailability, stability, and downstream processability (i.e. pill pressing and compaction). This project seeks to exploit the electric field influence on the underlying crystallization energy landscapes to effectively predict and control polymorphic phase pathways. We posit that certain metastable phases can be selected through careful modulation of key kinetic barriers by application of an external electric field.

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High Throughput Screening of Electrochemical Organic Reaction Chemistries

New chemical syntheses are needed to realign the industry within the tenants of modern environmental stewardship. Photo- and electro-chemistry, or the application of light or electricity to chemical reactions, respectively, are two potential green synthesis strategies that provide access to chemical products with a fewer number of steps (i.e. less energy, less waste). However, developing these methods through rote screening of possible reaction conditions is cost-, time-, and resource-intensive and has stymied widespread adoption in large scale chemical production.

This project focuses on the development and deployment of bipolar electrochemical (BPE) sensors to miniaturize and parallelize the discovery process. Bipolar electrodes are unique in that they allow electrochemical reactions to be driven wirelessly at microelectrodes positioned within in an electric field. In this way, hundreds of parallel reactions can be controlled and monitored simultaneously on a ‘chip’ the size of a quarter. Since each individual microreactor is about the width of a hair, energy inputs and waste outputs are negligible while hundreds of reactions are quantified in minutes rather than serially over days. This would greatly increase the discovery rate while decreasing the discovery footprint for these emerging synthetic tools.

Bipolar electrochemistry for heavy metal ion analysis in water'

A dynamic understanding of metals in water requires an equally dynamic, sensitive, and ideally, deployable analytical process. While electrochemistry fits the bill for most criteria, it has long been limited by analysis speed. Again, bipolar electrode (BPE) arrays can be leveraged to electrochemically measure hundreds of water samples simultaneously. In this project, we will develop both the device and method for high throughput analysis of copper (Cu) and lead (Pb) in water using BPE arrays. We hypothesize that light emission from chemiluminescence at one pole of each BPE electrode can be used to the amounts of Pb or Cu at the other pole over the entire device.

Reference Materials

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