Hicks Research Group

Welcome to the Hicks Group Website! We are primarily focused in the area of heterogeneous catalysis. We seek to understand how the properties and structures of catalysts affect activity and selectivity for specific reactions. We couple our experimental results with detailed characterization of the catalysts to develop relationships between the catalyst structure and the resulting catalytic activity. We also study catalyst stability at reaction conditions, as fundamental understanding of stability is required for advanced catalyst development and for process commercialization. Our research group can be categorized into three primary Research Directions.

Research Direction 1: Plasma-Stimulated Catalysis. We focus our efforts on determining how nonthermal plasma and catalysts can be integrated to activate otherwise stable molecules (e.g., N₂, CH₄, CO₂) and facilitate their transformations to desired products.

Research Direction 2: Catalyst Discovery for Alkane/Alkene Transformations. The Hicks group seeks to discovery new, selective catalysts based on earth-abundant metals to more effectively use domestic shale gas resources. These catalysts allow natural gas resources to be converted to liquid fuels so that they can be transported more easily and utilized in existing devices such as vehicle engines. Our efforts here center on new alkane dehydrogenation and olefin oligomerization catalysts.

Research Direction 3: Lignocellulosic Biomass and CO₂ Conversions. The Hicks group continues to discover new catalytic materials for biomass conversion and CO₂ utilization. Of particular interest are selective catalysts with high deoxygenation selectivity (biomass conversions) or high methanol selectivity (CO₂ conversion).