Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology · Environmental Science
Professor Yun-Ho Ahn's research lab specializes in the fundamental and applied aspects of clathrate hydrates, focusing on host-guest interactions, structural dynamics, and the manipulation of hydrate frameworks for advanced energy and environmental applications. The lab investigates how guest molecules, including hydrocarbons, gases, and radicals, interact with water-based host lattices under various conditions such as γ-irradiation and external stimuli. Key research directions include the design of hydrate systems with enhanced stability and guest occupancy through defect engineering, conformational control of guest molecules, and the development of novel hydrate-based materials for energy storage and gas separation.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
This work introduces a “hydrate seed solution”, a surfactant solution containing pre-constructed structure II (sII) hydrate crystals, for the rapid formation of hydrogen-enriched hydrocarbon mixed hydrates. We observed the instantaneous nucleation and fast growth of mixed gas hydrates for both CH4–H2 and C2H6–H2 mixtures with the cyclopentane (CP) hydrate seed. The CP hydrate seed, which is immiscible with water, dominantly induces the growth of CH4–H2 and C2H6–H2 mixed gas hydrates with thermod
Can we create even more “plenty of room at the bottom” of the confined nanospaces in clathrate hydrates by tuning the complex interactions between the host water frameworks and guest molecules? Because the lattice of the clathrate hydrate is stabilized by van der Waals forces between the host and guest, irradiating the lattice of the clathrate hydrate with energetic particles is anticipated to introduce artificial defects on the host water molecules, resulting in creating a better occupation of
This study characterized new structure II (sII) clathrate hydrates, consisting of 136 H<sub>2</sub>O molecules with 8 large 5<sup>12</sup>6<sup>4</sup> cages and 16 small 5<sup>12</sup> cages, with methacrolein for the first time.
Acyclic hydrocarbon molecules favor the gauche or cis conformation, which are more stable in terms of molecular geometry when they are enclathrated in clathrate hydrates. Once they are captured, they maintain their conformations in the hydrate cavities. However, on the basis of Raman spectra and density functional theory (DFT) calculations, we observed conformational changes of an acyclic guest molecule (3-buten-2-one) occurring in the hydrate cavities induced by intercavity electron transfer af
The structural determination of clathrate hydrates, nonstoichiometric crystalline host-guest materials, is challenging because of the dynamical disorder and partial cage occupancies of the guest molecules. The application of direct space methods with Rietveld analysis can determine the powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) patterns of clathrates. Here, we conducted Rietveld analysis with the direct space method for the structural determination of binary tetrahydrofuran (THF) + O2 and 3-hydroxytetrahyd
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