Events Calendar

Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Seminar - Distinguished Lecture Series

Speaker: Professor Susannah Scott, Department of Chemical Engineering , University of California - Santa Barbara

Talk Title: Modeling active sites in heterogeneous catalysts for olefin polymerization and metathesis

Abstract: Kinetic analysis and in situ spectroscopic methods have long been used to characterize catalysts, and are essential to our understanding of how these materials behave under reaction conditions. Recent explorations of simple and complex oxides as heterogeneous catalysts using a combination of unconventional non-isothermal kinetic methods and operando spectroscopies have revealed that active sites respond rapidly to variations in the redox environment. In particular, IR spectroscopy of adsorbed CO and X-ray absorption spectroscopy at the Pd K-edge were used to obtain complementary information about surface and the sub-surface states in PdOx nanoparticles during lean CO oxidation for three distinct activity regimes: low, intermediate and high conversion. A change in the oxidation state of surface Pd atoms coincides with a first-order kinetic phase transition associated with light-off and extinction. These findings inspired the redesign of simple oxide catalysts as complex oxides to stabilize the most active phase.

Host: Dr. Sharada

Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 100

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Karen Woo/Mork Family