Interfacial reactions happen at the boundary where materials in different phases, for example a solid and a liquid, meet each other. These reactions drive all elemental cycling on Earth and play pivotal roles in human activities such as agriculture, water purification, energy production and storage, environmental contaminant remediation and nuclear waste repository management.
Young-Shin Jun, a professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, co-authored a review paper published May 24 in Chemical Reviews that celebrates the scientific advances in the field of interfacial reactions. The authors also present new avenues and opportunities to explore in the decades ahead.
