Doctorate for Mauricio Lopez Luna
Today, Mauricio Lopez Luna defended his doctoral thesis at TU Berlin. He carried out research on support and size effects in CO2 hydrogenation reactions over Fe-based catalysts.
The main topic of his PhD project was the re-valorisation of the green gas carbon dioxide through a modified Fisher-Tropsch process. The idea was to gain fundamental mechanistic understanding on the catalytically active species under realistic reaction conditions. In particular, model systems were used to investigate whether Fe oxide species or Fe carbide species were present during operation, and whether the pre-catalyst structure (NP support or NP size) played a role.
Mauricio Lopez Luna joined the FHI from Mexico at the end of 2018 with a strong background in Chemical Engineering. At the ISC department he was engaged in surface science characterization methods, e. g. near ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (NAPXPS), UHV-based metal deposition via physical vapor deposition to prepare model Fe and Fe oxide nanoparticles (NPs) supported on SiO2 and Al2O3 oxides.
Mauricio Lopez Luna has made several additional important contributions to the department, e.g. training of other students and postdocs with our first Raman spectrometer. He also worked on the design of a high pressure (15 bar) reactor cell for a Raman system that he subsequently used for some of his collaborative work within the ISC Department. In addition, he designed a reactor to carry out plasma treatments of “levitated” nanocrystalline powder catalysts, and also applied the same ideas to study.
Mauricio Lopez Luna has already secured a postdoctoral position at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in USA starting in April 2023.
Members of Mauricio Lopez Luna's examination committee were Prof Dr. Günther Rupprechter from TU Wien, Prof Dr. Reinhard Schomäcker and Prof. Dr. Andrea Mroginski both from TU Berlin, and Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldán Cuenya from the Fritz Haber Institute (FHI) of the Max Planck Society.
