Rachel Kurchin - Modeling Electrochemical Reaction Rates at Fluid-Solid Interfaces - IPAM at UCLA
Presenter
October 9, 2025
Abstract
Recorded 09 October 2025. Rachel Kurchin of Carnegie Mellon University presents "Modeling Electrochemical Reaction Rates at Fluid-Solid Interfaces" at IPAM's Bridging Scales from Atomistic to Continuum in Electrochemical Systems Workshop.
Abstract: Reaction rate models are a vital tool to understand behavior of electrochemical systems. The Butler-Volmer model is a standard workhorse in the field, but especially at more extreme conditions (large currents, high overpotentials), it fails to capture realistic behavior. In this talk, I will introduce an MHC variant that explicitly incorporates the electronic density of states of the solid side of a solid-electrolyte interface. I will showcase a software package I developed that implements this model, alongside a variety of standard electrochemical rate models, and additionally allows the construction of multidimensional phase maps along axes of composition, current, temperature, or any other model parameter. This functionality relies critically on the automatic differentiation capabilities of the Julia Language to be able to smoothly and efficiently handle mathematically nontrivial model formulations in terms of integrals, inverse functions, etc. I will showcase the capabilities of this package to easily compare model types, fit to experimental data, and construct these phase maps.
Learn more online at: https://www.ipam.ucla.edu/programs/workshops/workshop-ii-bridging-scales-from-atomistic-to-continuum-in-electrochemical-systems/