Center for Functional Nanomaterials Seminar

Abstract: Future rational design of catalytic systems well-suited for application to a continually changing host of feedstock and product materials is largely dependent on developing our fundamental understanding of catalytic processes under increasingly complex conditions. The end-goal of such work is the eventual prediction and development of process-optimized catalysts exclusively from first-principles methodologies. Nonetheless, state-of-the art development of industrially relevant catalytic materials remains largely Edisonian in nature. To help close the "complexity gap" currently obstructing the road to more efficient heterogeneous catalyst design and optimization, experimentalists have begun focusing on ways to expand the reach of fundamental studies into more realistic conditions, while simultaneously working to elucidate more detailed fundamental insights from explorations of realistically applicable samples in the hopes of eventually establishing complete overlap between the two approaches. Using the UHV-based, surface-science model-catalyst approach, researchers have progressively augmented the materials complexity of well-defined systems (i.e. starting with single-element, single-crystals of varying order and evolving to multi-element, single-crystalline materials and/or size/shape-selected clusters supported on such films) in efforts to capture the importance of an increasing number of fundamental parameters relevant to conventionally prepared catalyst systems. Likewise, an increasing number of researchers have begun to exploit a host of surface-science compatible techniques to explore such systems under conditions bridging the so-called "pressure-gap" for similar reasons. These developments have unequivocally led to significant improvements to the collective understanding of fundamental concepts necessary for a more generalized understanding of catalytic materials that would not have been possible without increasing sample complexities