Seminars Archive
Adventures in Catalytic Nanospace: resolving catalytic phenomena at the atomic scale.
Wolfson Nanoscience Laboratory and Cardiff Catalysis Institute, School of Chemistry, Cardiff University, Wales, UK.
Abstract
Heterogeneous catalysis is usually accomplished with materials in nanoparticulate form. In this presentation I will describe one of our approaches to understanding catalytic processes and materials. This approach involves the fabrication of ultra-nanoparticulate model catalysts using MVD (metal vapour deposition) and MOCVD (metal-organic chemical vapour deposition) to form particles in the size range 1-10 nm, which can be imaged at very high spatial resolution (and in some cases at atomic resolution) using STM (scanning tunnelling microscopy). I will concentrate on two systems we have used
i)Pd/TiO2 powdered catalysts are used for anaerobic photocatalytic hydrogen production, namely Pd/TiO2. Important catalytic phenomena, such as SMSI and spillover are resolved by using model catalyst methods;
ii)mixed metal oxides (such as iron molybdate) are used for methanol selective oxidation, and we are attempting to model such materials, based on iron oxide single crystals with Mo layers present.
