Center: NSF center for synthetic organic electrochemistry

The National Science Foundation's Division of Chemistry awarded a $3.8 million Cooperative Agreement to the University of Missouri System (Missouri University of Science & Technology) on September 1, 2025, under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) to establish the NSF Center for Synthetic Organic Electrochemistry (CSOE). This five-year center, with a completion date of August 31, 2030, aims to advance synthetic organic electrochemistry by developing enabling, green, safe, and economical electrochemical reactions that use electrons as chemical reagents for oxidation and reduction processes. The center brings together synthetic chemists, surface chemists, electroanalytical chemists, theorists, materials scientists, and chemical engineers to understand fundamental electrochemical processes and create new methodologies applicable to pharmaceutical synthesis, new materials development, and agricultural product manufacturing. The CSOE addresses the critical challenge of scaling electrochemical approaches across diverse substrates and conducting conditions while reducing reliance on traditional oxidizing and reducing agents that generate substantial waste and safety concerns.

The center's deliverables encompass the invention of new electrosynthetic reactions, development of novel methodologies and techniques, creation of enabling electrode materials and electrocatalytic systems, computational modeling of electrochemical interfaces, and mechanistic investigations of electrochemical reactivity. The CSOE includes nine sub-awardees across leading research institutions—including the University of Michigan, University of Illinois, Cornell University, Columbia University, Ohio State University, University of Utah, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Minnesota, Caltech, the Scripps Research Institute, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Irvington Research LLC—each contributing specialized expertise in areas such as spectroelectrochemistry, electrocatalysis, computational modeling, materials characterization, synthetic methodology development, and broader impacts evaluation. Additional impacts include graduate and postdoctoral training in team science and entrepreneurship, K-12 outreach efforts, and workforce development initiatives to support the nation's chemical industry.

Abstract

The ability to use electrons as chemical reagents in oxidation reactions (removing electrons) or reduction reactions (adding electrons) has long held the potential to revolutionize the way in which we synthesize everything from pharmaceuticals to new materials to agricultural products. The approach offers a simple, clean way to access new chemistry that is not available with other methods. Yet in spite of this potential and growing interest, there remain very few cases where the approach is viable at useful scales and across a range of substrates. For this reason, the csoe team brings together synthetic chemists, surface chemists, electroanalytical chemists, theorists, materials scientists, and chemical engineers to understand the detailed processes that are central removing electrons from and adding electrons to molecules. In this way, the discoveries, new methodologies, and techniques developed in csoe enable safer and more selective ways to build molecules in both academia and industry. Other broader impacts include graduate and postdoctoral training in team science and entrepreneurship and outreach efforts to k-12 students and science centers. Chemistry is one of our nation?s largest and most productive industries, and the csoe is committed to recruiting and training the talented work force needed for IT to thrive. The mission of the NSF center for synthetic organic electrochemistry (csoe) is to make synthetic organic electrochemistry mainstream through the invention of enabling, green, safe, and economic new reactions and the demystification of fundamental electrochemical reactivity. Oxidation and reduction reactions are critical steps in the production of almost all modern chemical products. Most of these critical reactions are still done with large amounts of oxidizing and reducing agents, a situation that leads to large amounts of waste and the associated costs and safety issues associated with their removal. Preparative electrochemical methods offer an opportunity to circumvent this problem due to their high product efficiency, mild conditions, ease of scalability, and ability to channel any waste to either benign, readily removable products or useful chemical substrates and reagents. By integrating expertise across many areas (electrochemistry, material science, surface science, computational modeling, mechanistic analysis, and synthetic organic chemistry), csoe is building the knowledge base, techniques, and instrumentation needed to promote widespread adoption of preparative electrochemical methods. The center is focused on the development of new transformations that highlight to the larger community how electrochemical methods can be employed in a variety of settings and designing the instrumentation and electrochemical cells needed of that community to adopt the methods being developed. The work requires an integrated and synergistic research environment that offers unique opportunities for undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to learn how science on the interface between different fields is best pursued. This training is further enhanced through vibrant partnerships with industry, collaborative interdisciplinary training of scientists and engineers, and by engaging in community-wide education and outreach. In this way, csoe is focused on developing the new science and scientists needed for a more vibrant future. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are planned for this award.