Professor Hendrik Heinz and his CU Boulder team, along with collaborators from University of California, Los Angeles, achieved a breakthrough that could boost clean energy production. The  was featured on the cover of the journal “Nature Catalysis” in July.

In the study, researchers pinpointed the active sites of tiny platinum-alloy catalysts, which are crucial for making fuel cells more efficient at converting water into energy.

Fuel cells generate electricity through a chemical reaction, typically combining hydrogen with oxygen. Unlike traditional combustion engines, they produce energy without burning fuel, making fuel cells a clean, efficient technology, ideal for powering electric vehicles.

The catalysts accelerate the reactions that convert hydrogen and oxygen into electricity, making the process more efficient and enhancing the overall performance of the fuel cell. Using advanced 3D atomic imaging and machine learning, the study revealed how these catalysts work at an atomic level, providing insights that could help design better catalysts to address global energy challenges.

Cheng Zhu, a postdoctoral associate in the Heinz Group, made significant contributions to the study and recently joined the faculty at Guangdong Technion - Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT) in China.

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation's Materials Genome Initiative, (), including the first Special Creativity Award in the DMREF program. Heinz led the CU Boulder-UCLA team, which has resulted in more than 60 publications, including more than 10 papers in top journals like “Science” and “Nature” and high-level “Nature” journals such as “Nature Catalysis.” The UCLA team included the senior investigators Phillipe Sautet, Yu Huang and Jianwei (John) Miao. 

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Hendrik Heinz, professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Colorado 

Boulder, has been awarded an International Association for Advanced Materials (IAAM), in recognition of his contributions to advanced materials, engineering and technology. 

The prestigious award was given to Heinz for creating powerful computational simulation tools that accurately model inorganic-biological systems, ranging from tiny atoms to a larger micrometer scale, Heinz said. The tools have greatly improved the accuracy of material design, making it possible to predict and create catalysts, composites and structural materials more efficiently. The increased accuracy allows researchers to speed up the design process and test new materials, leading to the development of improved materials, he added.

As part of the honor, Heinz was invited to deliver the IAAM Scientist Medal Lecture at the American Fellow Summit, held on March 1 in Miami, Florida. Following the lecture, he was presented with the IAAM Scientist Medal citation. 

In 2020, Heinz was elected as a Fellow of the IAAM. 

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Current and former members of University of Colorado Boulder’s have earned prestigious for their research centered on designing  lightweight, high-strength materials aimed at reducing the costs of spaceflights. 

Crafting such materials is challenging, requiring combining tiny sub-nanometer-sized molecules to meter-sized panels, said Hendrik Heinz, professor of chemical and biological engineering and materials science. His team has been part of the NASA Space Technology Research Institute for Ultrastrong Composites by Computational Design ().

“This award recognizes the hard work of my team, including several prolific graduate students, and the amazing efforts and collaborations within the US-COMP team,” he said.

The awards were extended to Heinz and his current and former team members: Amanda Garley (PhD ChemBio ‘22), Krishan Kanhaiya (PhD ChemBio ‘22), Michael Nathanson (MS ChemEng’18) and Jordan Winetrout, a PhD student on the Heinz team. 

Heinz emphasized that reducing the weight of required materials through a combination of making them lighter and stronger results in cost savings for both launch expenses and fuel consumption. For example, the cost of launching one pound of spacecraft or cargo to the moon is approximately $10,000 but this cost surges to $1 million for Mars missions, he added.

           Professor Hendrik Heinz

Consequently, reducing payload weight by just one pound equates to nearly a million dollars in savings for future Mars missions and enhances the transport of essential cargo.

To achieve the goal of creating lightweight, high-strength materials, the team developed cutting-edge simulation methods for analyzing and predicting the thermal and mechanical properties of composite materials, such as carbon fiber yarns and polymer matrix composites. 

These simulation methods include the development of the reactive INTERFACE force field (IFF-R), which predicts how those materials soften upon heating as well as how they bend, stretch, and fail. Additionally, the Heinz lab harnessed machine learning techniques to accelerate predictions of materials properties across length scales that surpass the capabilities of traditional computer simulation methods. 

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Associate Professor Hendrik Heinz earned two prestigious distinctions recently: his election to the Senior Editor position for the and as a Fellow of the (IAAM).

Langmuir, which is published by the American Chemical Society, is the leading chemistry journal focused on “the science and application of systems and materials in which the interface dominates structure and function.”

The journal publishes advances in established concepts as well as novel and emerging research directions. As Senior Editor, Heinz will work with the editorial staff to bring hundreds of manuscripts a year to publication. He will also recruit authors and develop lectures and symposia for the publication’s community of researchers.

Heinz hopes to highlight promising new areas of research, figuratively and geographically.

“An example of one such promising area is the chemistry of interfaces in cement and sustainable building materials, where we recently ,” Heinz said. “One of my major goals for the journal is to raise its global impact, especially in Asia. At the heart of all our activities is relationship building and excellent service among the authors, referees and readers of Langmuir.”

Hendrik has previously served as an associate editor for the from 2017-2021 and for from 2015-2017.

Hendrik was also elected as a Fellow of the International Association of Advanced Materials, one of the highest honors afforded advanced materials researchers. Election as a Fellow of IAAM represents a member’s significant contributions to the field of advanced materials science, engineering and technology. Heinz delivered his IAAM Fellow Lecture in December.

“I was elected as a Fellow and invited for the Fellowship lecture to share our advances in precision modeling of biological and nanostructured materials from atoms to the micrometer scale,” Heinz said. “As a fun fact, I still do not know who organized the nomination for me! I had a similar experience when I was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2016.”

Heinz points to the simulations he developed with his group to visualize and quantify molecular recognition and assembly of an expansive range of biomaterials and nanomaterials.

“We can consistently cover mixtures of compounds and nanostructures of diverse chemistry across the periodic table using these molecular dynamics simulations,” he said. “We also developed new chemical theory that has allowed us to unite force fields for inorganic compounds with those for organic and biomolecular compounds—which were previously separated—in a singular platform called the Interface Force Field. We also developed reliable parameters for many inorganic compounds that were unavailable previously.”

The methods Heinz describes have greatly increased the accuracy of computational predictions at a significantly reduced computational cost.

“We are the first group to develop and implement such a tool for molecular dynamics simulation, which is critical for computational chemistry and materials science going forward,” he said. “The Interface Force Field is used by academics, companies and government labs, and we are working on efficient ways of integration for the user community, new functionality and integration of data science methods.”

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