Bulk Reference Catalysts
Dr. Iryna Antonyshyn
The necessary prerequisite and initial step for development of active and selective industrial catalysts is a knowledge-based insight into its nature under reaction conditions. From this point of view, the industrial catalysts represent too complicated systems, including active catalyst phase, support, plenty of modifiers and promoters, etc. On another hand, the single crystals are the ideal form for fundamental bulk- and surface-oriented insight into the active species and reaction mechanism, but their synthesis is challenging, time- and effort-demanding (if possible in overall). In this sense, bulk catalysts represent a good platform to obtain well-defined materials (without support and modifiers) and save the tremendous effort needed for growth of single crystals. Therefore, they can be effectively used as reference catalysts for the more sophisticated and complicated ones.
Bulk reference catalysts can be represented either by the intermetallic compounds with their inherent crystal structures (different from those of constituent elements) or by solid solutions (phases preserving the structure of (at least) one component). In both cases, only single-phase materials with well-controlled chemical composition and crystal structure are considered. Using bulk catalysts as reference for LCCs allows to omit the impact of functional interface as well as rough nano-morphology effects in latter.
The bulk reference catalysts are successfully employed in following studies:
- Semi-hydrogenation of acetylene using Pd1-xAux (x = 0-1) catalysts
- Thermal CO2 hydrogenation with Fe1-xRhx (x = 0-0.1) catalysts
Catalyst synthesis:
