Alexis T. Bell

About

Alexis T. Bell is a Professor of the Graduate School in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds the titles of Chancellor's Professor, Emeritus; The Dow Professor of Sustainable Chemistry, Emeritus; and Faculty Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His educational background includes a B.S. and Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, obtained in 1964 and 1967 respectively. Professor Bell has received numerous awards, including the Curtis W. McGraw Award for Research from the American Association of Engineering Education, the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis from the Catalysis Society, and the William H. Walker Award of the AIChE. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on understanding the fundamental relationships between the structure and composition of heterogeneous catalysts and their performance. He studies reaction mechanisms to identify factors limiting catalyst activity and selectivity, investigating systems such as the synthesis of oxygenated compounds from COx, the conversion of alkanes to olefins and oxygenated products under oxidizing conditions, and the reduction of nitric oxide. His approach combines experimental techniques—including spectroscopic methods like IR, Raman, NMR, UV-Visible, and EXAFS—with theoretical methods such…

Research topics

• Chemistry
• Computer Science
• Materials science
• Organic chemistry
• Physical chemistry
• Nanotechnology
• Inorganic chemistry
• Computational chemistry
• Composite material
• Systems engineering

Selected publications

• Software for the frontiers of quantum chemistry: An overview of developments in the Q-Chem 5 package

  The Journal of Chemical Physics · 2021 · 1305 citations

  This article summarizes technical advances contained in the fifth major release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry program package, covering developments since 2015. A comprehensive library of exchange-correlation functionals, along with a suite of correlated many-body methods, continues to be a hallmark of the Q-Chem software. The many-body methods include novel variants of both coupled-cluster and configuration-interaction approaches along with methods based on the algebraic diagrammatic construc…

  DOI

• Tailored catalyst microenvironments for CO2 electroreduction to multicarbon products on copper using bilayer ionomer coatings

  Nature Energy · 2021 · 452 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Catalytic deconstruction of waste polyethylene with ethylene to form propylene

  Science · 2022 · 380 citations

  as an isomerization catalyst selectively degraded this unsaturated polymer to propylene in yields exceeding 80%. These results show promise for the application of mild catalysis to deconstruct otherwise stable polyolefins.

  DOI

• The 2022 solar fuels roadmap

  Journal of Physics D Applied Physics · 2022 · 137 citations

  Abstract Renewable fuel generation is essential for a low carbon footprint economy. Thus, over the last five decades, a significant effort has been dedicated towards increasing the performance of solar fuels generating devices. Specifically, the solar to hydrogen efficiency of photoelectrochemical cells has progressed steadily towards its fundamental limit, and the faradaic efficiency towards valuable products in CO 2 reduction systems has increased dramatically. However, there are still numerou…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pathways for the Formation of C₂₊ Products under Alkaline Conditions during the Electrochemical Reduction of CO₂

  ACS Energy Letters · 2022 · 84 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Establishing how Cu facilitates the electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) to C2+ products remains a critical challenge. Under typical reaction conditions, the pH near the electrode is considerably more alkaline than that in the bulk due to mass transport limitations. Challenges with probing alkaline pathways using computational methods have limited understanding of the CO2RR under experimentally relevant conditions. In this work, using the Volmer reaction on Cu (100), we demonstrate tha…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Martin Head‐Gordon

  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  283 shared

• Ezra L. Clark

  Technical University of Denmark

  188 shared

• Adam Z. Weber

  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  180 shared

• Justin C. Bui

  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  142 shared

• Enrique Iglesia

  University of California, Berkeley

  115 shared

• Frerich J. Keil

  112 shared

• T. Don Tilley

  University of California, Berkeley

  109 shared

• Niels Hansen

  University of Stuttgart

  93 shared

Education

• ScD, Department of Chemical Engineering

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1967

Awards & honors

• Curtis W. McGraw Award for Research, American Association of…
• The Professional Progress and R. H. Wilhelm Awards, the Amer…
• Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis, Catalysis Soc…
• National Academy of Engineering (1987)
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sc…

Similar researchers at University of California, Berkeley

• Peidong Yangh-262
• Jennifer A. Doudnah-230
• Jeffrey R. Longh-189