Shiyu Zhang
Ohio State University, OH·Chemistry
Copper is a recurring thread in this chemistry: it powers enzymes that turn oxygen into water, and it can drive reactions with electricity instead of harsh chemicals. The research spans three projects linked by electron-transfer chemistry.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
multicopper oxidase
oxygen reduction reaction
tricopper clusters
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Synthesize tricopper(II,II,I) peroxo complexes in cage-like ligands to model the short-lived peroxy intermediate of multicopper oxidases, and characterize their electronic features by spectroscopy.
- Build a tricopper μ3-O μ2-OH model of the native intermediate and use kinetic studies of electron, proton and coupled proton–electron transfer to learn how enzymes steer oxygen reduction.
- Develop CuII/CuIII-nucleophile catalysts that use electricity to functionalize C(sp3)–H bonds at low voltage with simple nucleophiles such as fluoride, avoiding strong chemical oxidants.
- Isolate and characterize CuIII-nucleophile intermediates at low temperature to measure their redox potentials and hydrogen-atom-transfer reactivity, and use this to choose voltage, current, temperature and ligand.
- Develop SPARKLE, an interpretable machine-learning model, to rank organic electrode materials by solubility, specific energy and ease of synthesis, and extend it to lithium-ion and magnesium-ion batteries.
- Use SPARKLE to design organic electrodes that need less than 10% conductive carbon additive while keeping high specific capacity.
More about the research
They cover how copper enzymes handle oxygen, how copper catalysts can make drug-like molecules with electrical energy, and how machine learning can find metal-free, earth-abundant materials for batteries.
Why it matters
Electrosynthesis could make medicinally relevant molecules more cheaply, with less waste and fewer steps, because it avoids expensive oxidants. Organic electrode materials made from abundant elements could reduce batteries' dependence on lithium and cobalt. Models of copper enzymes clarify how nature reduces oxygen efficiently, a reaction that also matters for energy technologies.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Engineering principles for sustainable organic electrode materials
NSF · Sep 2025 – Aug 2028
Biomimetic Reactivity and Spectroscopy of Trinuclear Copper Centers in Multicopper Oxidases
NSF · Sep 2025 – Aug 2028
Electrically Driven C-H Functionalization with CuII/CuIII Redox Catalysts
NIH · Jun 2022 – May 2027
Closest labs
Ellen Matson
University of Rochester, NY·Chemistry
Determine how hydrogen atoms are taken up at the surface of polyoxovanadate–alkoxide and –carboxylate clusters, molecular stand-ins for reducible metal oxide nanomaterials, mapping structure–function relationships through self-assembly and post-synthetic modification.
Mark Lipke
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Chemistry
Measure how water trapped inside redox-active porphyrin nanocages changes the acidity of acid-bearing guest molecules and their combined proton-electron transfer, using electrochemistry and 1H NMR to quantify water uptake.
Robert R Knowles
Princeton University, NJ·Chemistry
Develop light-driven deracemization of ketones and asymmetric contra-thermodynamic olefin isomerization, using excited-state redox catalysis to give product mixtures not reachable by ordinary heat-driven reactions.
The school
Ohio State University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 882 research doctorates a year.
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