Yukun Liu and Kunmo Koo Publish In Situ Gas Cell Research in PNAS

In the September issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Yukun Liu, Kunmo Koo, Xiaobing Hu, and Vinayak Dravid contributed an article titled 'Unraveling the adsorption-limited hydrogen oxidation reaction at the palladium surface via in situ electron microscopy.' This study achieved the first direct visualization of nanoscale water bubble formation through the Pd-catalyzed hydrogen oxidation reaction. The team used in situ gas cell TEM to successfully identify the optimized gas conditions that accelerate the water generation process and proposed that adsorption is the key process limiting the reaction rate.

This study gained significant coverage in mainstream media, with 20 outlets reporting on it, reaching an estimated audience of 4.1 million people. Major outlets included Gizmodo, Business Insider, LiveScience, New Atlas, IFL Science, MSN, and Yahoo! News. The video on Northwestern's YouTube channel reached 238.5K views by October 2024, making it Northwestern’s most-watched video of the year. Read the article and press release below:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2408277121

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2024/september/watch-water-form-out-of-thin-air/