About Me

Karan Hiroko, Ph.D. Professor
Education: Brown University, Ph.D., Wilkes University, MS, Hoshi University, Tokyo Japan B.S.,
Phone: 718-270-5168
E-mail:hiroko@mec.cuny.edu

Research Interest: Development of Catalysts for Fuel Cells and Chemical Education

Current Research: Platinum is considered to be the most efficient catalysts for oxygen reduction for fuel cells, however, there are some drawbacks as platinum is expensive and suffers from slow kinetics due to OH poisoning. Hence, study to develop catalysts as efficient as platinum is on-going by using other transition metal alloys and nanocomposites and depositing platinum monolayer on the core metal by galvanic displacement of copper monolayer obtained by the under-potential deposition reaction. This technique is promising as it can apply on sturdy metal such as iridium as a core material while using less platinum and still have benefit of platinum activities. This research is on-going in collaboration with researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory.