Department of Chemistry
725 21st Street, NW
Corcoran Hall, Room 107
Washington, DC 20052

Phone: (202) 994-6121
Fax: (202) 994-5873
gwchem@gwu.edu


Stuart Licht

Stuart Licht

Title — Professor of Chemistry

Address — 20101 Academic Way
Ashburn, VA 20147

Office — Exploration Hall, room 323

Phone — (703) 726-8215

E-mail — slicht@gwu.edu

Areas of Expertise —

Renewable Energy, Solar Energy, Energy Storage – Batteries & Fuel Cells, Environmental Chemistry, Electrochemistry, and Quantum Mechanics

Current Research

The Licht research group has taken on the challenge of developing a comprehensive solution to climate change. A new solar process has been introduced, the STEP process, which efficiently removes carbon from the atmosphere and generates the staples needed by society, ranging from fuels, to metals, bleach and construction materials, at high solar efficiency and without carbon dioxide generation. In the field of battery and fuel cell research new multiple electron (per molecule) storage processes are introduced and studied, leading to batteries with greater storage capacity than gasoline. On route to new pathways to utilize renewable energy, we explore fundamental chemical processes ranging from quantum mechanics to thermodynamics of water, new analytical and environmental methodologies, and hydrogen, halide, chalcogenide and transition metal chemistry.

Website

http://home.gwu.edu/~slicht/

Education

BA, MA Wesleyan University, 1976, 1981
PhD, The Weizmann Institute of Science , 1986

Background

Prof. Stuart Licht completed his Ph.D. at the Weizmann Institute, and a Postdoc at MIT. Prior to GWU, he served as a Program Director at the NSF, was Chair of Chemistry at UMass, and has received awards including the Electrochemical Society Energy Technology Research Award, the Gustella Award of the Technion, and held the Carlson Endowed Chair in Chemistry at Clark University.

Publications

"STEP: A solar chemical process to end anthropogenic global warming," Licht, Journal of Physical Chemistry, C, 113, 16283-16292 (2009).               

"Efficient Solar-Driven Synthesis, Carbon Capture, and Desalinization, STEP: Solar Thermal Electrochemical Production of Fuels, Metals, Bleach" Licht, Advanced Materials, 47, 5592-5612 (2011).

"Nano-VB2 synthesis from elemental vanadium and boron: nano- VB2 anode/air batteries," Licht, Hettige, Lau, Cubeta, Wu, Stuart, Wang, Electrochemical and Solid State Letters, 15, A12-A14 (2012).          

"Super-iron nanoparticles with facile cathodic charge transfer," Farmand, Jiang, Wang Ghosh, Ramaker, and Licht, Electrochemistry Communications, 13, 909-912 (2011).       

Extended listing, selected from over 300 Peer Reviewed Patents and Publications

Classes Taught

Chem 2122: Intro Quantitative Analysis

Chem 6320: Electrochemistry - Charge, Transfer & Storage (Selected Topics in Analytical Chemistry)