Burcu Gurkan

Assistant Professor
Chemical Engineering
Case Western Reserve University
United States of America

Biography

Education: B.S. Chemical Engineering, Middle East Technical University, 2004 M.S. Chemical Engineering, University of Toledo, 2006 Ph. D. Chemical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, 2011

Research Intrest

The Energy Lab focuses on the development of fundamental understanding of complex relations at the nanoscale, governing the electrode-electrolyte interactions that are pertinent to energy storage and conversion applications. In general, we are interested in the electrochemistry of ionic liquids (ILs). ILs are salts at liquid state and they have unique properties such as wide electrochemical window, nonflammability, negligible volatility and wide liquidus range which distinguish them from molecular solvents. Their properties can be tailored towards a specific application. Therefore, the development of structure-property relations are essential for the bottom-up approaches to realize renewable energy systems. For instance, classical theories on the formation of electrical-double layers near electrode surfaces do not capture the behavior of ionic liquids. We employ computational and experimental tools to understand the underlying physical and electrochemical phenomena at interfaces.

List of Publications
Goodrich,B. F., de la Fuente, J. C., Gurkan, B. E., Lopez, Z. K., Price, E. A., Huang, Y., Brennecke, J. F., “Effect of water and temperature on absorption of CO2 by amine-functionalized anion-tethered ionic liquids”, The Journal of Physical Chemistry B 29 (2011) 9140-9150
Gurkan, B. E., Gohndrone, T. R., McCready, M. J., Brennecke, J. F., “Reaction kinetics of CO2 absorption into phosphonium based anion-functionalized ionic liquids”, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 15 (2013) 7796-7811
Brown, P., Wasbrough, M. J., Gurkan, B. E., Hatton, T. A., “CO2 responsive microemulsions based on reactive ionic liquids”, Langmuir 30 (2014) 4267-4272
Brown, P., Gurkan, B. E., Hatton, T. A., “Enhanced gravimetric CO2 capacity and viscosity for ionic liquids with cyanopyrrolide anion”, AIChE Journal 7 (2015) 2280-2285
Gurkan, B., Simeon, F., Hatton, T. A., “Quinone Reduction in Ionic Liquids for Electrochemical CO2 separation”, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering 7 (2015) 1394-1405
Qiang, Z., Gurkan, B., Ma, J., Liu, X., Guo, Y., Cakmak, M., Cavicchi, K.A., Vogt, B.D., “Roll-to-roll fabrication of high surface area mesoporous carbon with process-tunable pore texture for optimization of adsorption capacity of bulky organic dyes”, Microporous and Mesoporous Materials 227 (2016) 57-64