Gerhard Ertl Lecture & Award

Thin film technology is a key technology in many high tech sectors today and plays a crucial role in the development of photovoltaics. It allows to control of a very broad set of material (e.g.electronic or optical) properties down to the atomic level, yet can be compatible with high-volume low-cost manufacturing. The Catlab project aims to exploit exactly these characteristics of thin film technology for use in catalytic reactions, especially for chemical energy carriers, such as (green) hydrogen and carbon- or nitrogen-based chemicals derived from it. [more]

Catalysts degrade over time during reactor operation, resulting in loss of activity, as well as selectivity. A variety of physical and chemical phenomena contribute toward catalyst degradation, such as particle growth, coking, poisoning, or chemical reactions between the catalyst and the reaction medium, or between the active material and the catalyst support. Catalyst degradation is not always well-understood, and improving a catalyst's life time is often a trial-and-error process. This lecture will cover the fundamental causes of typical catalyst deactivation phenomena, introduce computational and experimental techniques to analyze catalyst degradation, and demonstrate practical examples to a rational approach to make catalysts more resistant to degradation. [more]

Model catalysts are specifically designed to address the complexity issue in catalysis. Real catalysts are very complex, which makes them a nightmare for scientists seeking to understand how these systems work. Typically, only a small part of the catalyst’s compositional and structural spectrum is relevant for the catalytic process. Consequently, much of the spectral and structural information stems from irrelevant parts of the catalyst, making the identification of relevant components a non-trivial and error-prone task. [more]

It is well established that many heterogeneous catalysts encounter substantial changes of their properties if comparing the catalyst under turn-over conditions with those found ex-situ. These changes encompass not only structural but also electronic properties rendering a detailed characterization still challenging. A variety of characterization techniques have been developed in recent years toinvestigatecatalytic systems under operando conditions. In this respect it is important to realize that none of these methods allows to obtain a complete picture which requires on the one hand the combination of different techniques and on the other hand knowledge about available techniques and their potential use and their limitations. [more]

Heterogeneous catalysis is considered one of the key technologies in prospective energy conversion scenarios. Yield, efficiency, and lifetime of heterogeneous catalysts will become of utmost importance and the demand of novel high-performance catalysts fulfilling the above- mentioned criteria will rise tremendously. To cope with the prospective high demand for these functional solids, current catalyst development approaches that are based on empirical optimization may become insufficient and should be replaced by knowledge-based catalyst design strategies. [more]

Fuel cells and electrolysers require electrocatalysts to minimize losses during energy conversion processes. It is common practice that researchers rely solely on electrochemical methods to test stability in search of novel electrocatalysts. While degradation can be tracked using such methods, they fail when one aims to understand governing degradation mechanisms responsible for the losses in catalyst performance. Complementary physicochemical techniques are required. One such technique is inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) – the main topic of my talk. [more]

Electrochemistry plays a pivotal role in our future transition to sustainable energy, particularly for the conversion of electrical into chemical energy in electrolyzers, and the reverse conversion and utilization of the stored energy in batteries and fuel cells. The common challenge in these electrochemical devices is the development of active and durable materials for the catalysis. [more]

The increasing demand for renewable and low-cost energy motivates intensive research aimed at developing, characterizing and optimizing materials that can efficiently convert (sun) light into usable energy in the form of electricity or chemical fuels. Conventional characterization techniques either lack the spatial resolution necessary to resolve individual atoms, or they lack the temporal resolution required to capture structural rearrangements as they evolve. [more]

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The guidelines of sustainable development require a transformation of today's linear chemical industry with the aim of closed carbon cycles. In this process, renewable energy can be used as an energy/heating source and to provide chemical redox equivalents, e.g. in the form of hydrogen or electrons. Catalysts are essential to enable selective chemo-, bio-, or even electrocatalytic reactions under the dynamic supply of resources. [more]

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The focus will be the catalyst characterization and development in heterogenous catalysis in particular in acetylene hydrogenation. The role of acetylene hydrogenation in industry and future renewable energy approaches will be discussed. [more]

Tomorrow’s chemicals are facing massive transitions due to the need for an alternative energy input, changing feedstock, limited resources, varying cost structures, etc. Chemical and reaction engineering is in charge for chemical and electrochemical reactions to meet the upcoming business and technical objectives. For simultaneous process-product design, a multiscale understanding provides opportunities to consider phenomena on different time and length scales of the reaction system. [more]

Metal oxide photoelectrodes tend to be cheap, easy to fabricate, and show relatively good (photo)chemical stability in aqueous solutions. This makes them attractive candidates as light absorbers in a variety of photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic applications. However, the energy conversion efficiencies of these absorbers are poor compared to photovoltaic-grade materials. [more]