CCI Phase I: Center for Energetic Non-Equilibrium Chemistry at Interfaces (CENECI)

这个第一阶段的化学创新中心将寻求发现，表征和随后利用各种高能量和非平衡化学过程的接口。这将使催化、材料生长和加工以及凝聚态环境化学领域的变革性进展成为可能。 科学机会包括制备具有增强催化功能的新型亚稳界面，用不同试剂和底物温度进行化学反应以增强过程选择性，二氧化碳管理的新概念，以及基于在充满活力和非平衡条件下生长和加工的新的或精制的功能材料。 CCI带来了广泛的工具来应对这一重大挑战，包括超声和超高温分子束，原位和非原位扫描探针和电子显微镜，一整套表面科学和光学分析光谱，量子化学和材料计算，以及分子动力学，分子力学和蒙特卡罗模拟。界面高能非平衡化学中心（CENECI）将支持协作和团队，基于发现，整合了芝加哥大学，马萨诸塞州理工学院，威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校，蒙大拿州立大学和西北大学的研究人员。 博士后研究员以及高中，本科和研究生水平的学生将参加多个CENECI实验室的研究活动，从而显着扩大他们的培训，并向他们介绍基于团队的发现。这些活动将通过所有小组之间的网络基础设施链接和CENECI网站来实现，从而可以随时参加会议，研讨会，计算和实验。一项全面的外展计划将伴随所有机构的活动，第一阶段的重点是为芝加哥、麦迪逊和波士顿以及蒙大拿州美洲原住民社区的当地代表性不足的西班牙裔和非裔美国人K-12人口丰富化学教育。化学创新中心（CCI）计划支持能够解决重大问题的研究中心长期的基础化学研究挑战，很有可能产生变革性的研究和创新。这些中心将通过分享他们对这一挑战性问题的创新方法的结果，吸引广泛的科学和公众兴趣。

This Phase-I Center for Chemical Innovation will seek to discover, characterize and subsequently utilize a wide range of highly energetic and non-equilibrium chemical processes at interfaces. This will enable transformative advances in catalysis, materials growth and processing, and condensed state environmental chemistry. Scientific opportunities include the preparation of new classes of metastable interfaces with enhanced catalytic function, chemistry carried out with different reagent and substrate temperatures leading to enhanced process selectivity, new concepts in carbon dioxide management, and the creation of new or refined functional materials based on growth and processing under energetic and non-equilibrium conditions. The CCI brings a wide range of tools to bear on this grand challenge, including supersonic and hyperthermal molecular beams, in situ and ex situ scanning probe and electron microscopy, a complete suite of surface science and optical analytical spectroscopies, quantum chemical and materials computation, and molecular dynamics, molecular mechanics and Monte Carlo simulations.The Center for Energetic Non-Equilibrium Chemistry at Interfaces (CENECI) will support collaborative and team-based discovery that integrates researchers at the University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Montana State University and Northwestern University. Postdoctoral fellows as well as students at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels will participate in research activities in more than one CENECI laboratory, thus significantly broadening their training and introducing them to team-based discovery. These activities will be enabled by cyberinfrastructure links among all of the groups and a CENECI website, allowing ready participation in meetings, seminars, computation, and experiments from afar. A comprehensive outreach program will accompany activities at all institutions, with the focus during Phase-I being on chemistry education enrichment to the local underrepresented Hispanic and African-American K-12 populations in Chicago, Madison, and Boston, as well the Native American communities of Montana.The Centers for Chemical Innovation (CCI) Program supports research centers that can address major, long-term fundamental chemical research challenges that have a high probability of both producing transformative research and leading to innovation. These Centers will attract broad scientific and public interest by sharing the results of their innovative approach to this challenging question.