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Molly MacInnes

Assistant Professor
Offices, Departments, or Centers: Biological Chemistry , Chemistry ,

Professor MacInnes uses electrochemistry to study and design materials and interfaces. She is currently exploring two projects, both motivated by the broad goal of a cleaner, healthier Earth.

The first project involves designing and fabricating electrodes that can be used in detecting trace metal ions in water. Specifically, these electrodes are designed to selectively detect f-elements (lanthanides and actinides). These elements are in the very bottom two rows of the periodic table. The f-elements have not received nearly as much attention as the transition metals in sensing technology development because they are minor pollutants and their chemistry is not as well understood; however, their toxicity is high and they are becoming an increasing problem, especially in terms of nuclear waste disposal. This project involves designing and synthesizing (if necessary) lanthanide-selective ligands that can be attached to electrode surfaces, either covalently (through a chemical bond) or non-covalently (for example, using electrostatic interactions). Electrochemical methods will be used to test these modified electrodes and to understand their interactions with dissolved lanthanide ions.

The second project looks into ways to purify main group elements in environmentally friendly ways. Main group elements, especially silicon and germanium, are incredibly important in the electronics industry. They are critical components in solar cells and computer chips, among other applications. These elements are very abundant but exist mostly as oxides and sulfides (SiO2, GeO2, and GeS2). The current industrial methods for purifying and reducing these compounds to their elemental states involve temperatures above 2000°C and reactions with coal – hence very high carbon emissions. Recently it has been shown that SiO2 and GeO2 can be reduced to Si and Ge electrochemically using molten salts as the solvent (~ 800°C). This project explores the extent that this method is applicable. Can it be used on other main group elements? How does it depend on temperature and molten salt identity? Can we tune it to make it as energy efficient as possible? Air-free techniques (glovebox and Schlenk line work) will be crucial in this project as will electrochemistry and materials characterization methods.

Education and Degrees

B.A. (Honors), Oberlin College, 2013

Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2020

Postdoctoral, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2020-2022

Selected Publications

  • Molly M MacInnes, Zachary R Jones, Bo Li, Nickolas H Anderson, Enrique R Batista, Ida M DiMucci, Cecilia Eiroa-Lledo, Karah E Knope, Maksim Y Livshits, Stosh A Kozimor, Veronika Mocko, Kristen A Pace, Francisca R Rocha, Benjamin W Stein, Jennifer N Wacker, Ping Yang. “Using Molten Salts to Probe Outer-Coordination Sphere Effects on Lanthanide(III/II) Electron Transfer Reactions.” Dalton Trans., 2021, 50, 15696-15710
  • MacInnes, M. M.; Cousineau, B. R.; Youngs, S. M.; Sinniah, K.; Reczek, J. J.; Maldonado, S. “Discovery of Unusually Stable Reduced Viologen via Synergistic Folding and Encapsulation J. Electrochem. Soc. 2019, 166, H825-H834
  • Hlynchuk, S.; MacInnes, M. M.; and Maldonado, S. “Sensitization of p-GaP by physisorbed triarylmethane dyes.” J. Phys. Chem., 2018, 122, 20073-20082
  • MacInnes, M. M.; Hlynchuk, S.; Acharya, S.; Lehnert, N.; Maldonado, S., “Reduction of graphene oxide thin films by cobaltocene and decamethylcobaltocene.” ACS Appl. Mater. Inter., 2018, 10, 2004-2015.
  • Eady, S. C.; MacInnes, M. M.; Lehnert, N. “Immobilized Co-bis(benzenedithiolate) complexes: exceptionally active heterogeneous electrocatalysts for dihydrogen production from mildly acidic aqueous solutions.” Inorg. Chem., 2017, 56, 11654-11667
  • Spencer, L. P.; Yang, P.; Minasian, S. G.; Jilek, Robert E.; Batista, E. R.; Boland, K. S.; Boncella, J. M.; Conradson, S.D.; Clark, D.L.; Hayton, T.W.; Kozimor, S.A.; Martin, R.L.; MacInnes, M. M.; Olson, A.C.; Scott, B.L.; Shuh, D.K.; Wilkerson, M.P. “Tetrahalide Complexes of the [U(NR2)]2+: Synthesis, Theory, and Chlorine K-Edge X-ray Spectroscopy.” J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 2013, 135, 2279
  • Daly, S. R.; Klaehn, J. R.; Boland, K. S.; Kozimor, S. A.; MacInnes, M. M.; Peterman, D. R.; Scott, B. L. “NMR Spectroscopy and Spectral Characterization of Dithiophosphinate Ligands Relevant to Minor Actinide Extraction Processes.” Dalton Trans., 2012, 41, 216

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