Dayne Swearer

For Dayne Swearer, electrons have power—literally. At Northwestern University, his team uses the kinetic energy carried by “hot” electrons to drive some of the world’s most important industrial chemical reactions. Powered by renewable electricity, this approach could offer a cleaner route to staples like hydrogen and ammonia than traditional thermal processes that depend on fossil fuels. Swearer’s fascination with science started early: as a kid, he cracked the spine of his encyclopedia from reading it so often. A first-generation college student, he began his studies at Drexel University thinking about pursuing medicine, not realizing that a career in research was possible. But he was soon sold on chemistry. “I switched after getting involved in undergraduate research, knowing that I could make a really big impact in the world,” he says. He first encountered hot electrons during his PhD studies with Naomi Halas at Rice University, where he worked on plasmonic materials such as metal nanoparticles. When a light wave passes close to one of these nanoparticles, the electrons in the metal move in response to the light’s electric field. “You drive the electrons into this rhythmic kind of oscillation, called plasmon resonance,” Swearer says. The electrons gain so much kinetic energy that they can reach temperatures of 20,000 °C or more. By using white light to generate hot electrons in aluminum nanocrystals, Swearer and his colleagues at Rice showed that the electrons could be channeled into palladium islands on the nanocrystals’ surface. This helped the palladium catalyze the reaction between