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Fifth Meeting of the
Catalysis Club of Chicago 2011-2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
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Crowne Plaza Glen Ellyn
1250 Roosevelt Road
Glen Ellyn, IL
(630) 629-6000
Cost
$45 Professionals
$20
Students/Post Docs |
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Professor Peng Chen
Associate Professor
Department of Chemistry and
Chemical Biology
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
Chen Research Group
Abstract
Nanoparticles are important catalysts. Understanding their
structure-activity correlation is paramount for developing better
catalysts, but hampered by their inherent inhomogeneity: individual
nanoparticles differ from one to another, and for every
nanoparticle, it can change from time to time, especially during
catalysis. Furthermore, each nanoparticle presents on its surface
various types of sites, which are often unequal in catalytic
reactivity. To overcome these challenges, my group has been
developing single-molecule fluorescence imaging methods to study the
catalytic activity and dynamics of metal nanoparticles at the
single-particle level, in situ, and with real-time single-turnover
resolution and nanometer precision. I will present how we
interrogate the catalytic activity, mechanism, heterogeneous
reaction pathways, selectivity, and surface-restructuring-coupled
temporal dynamics of individual Au nanoparticles. I will also
present our latest work in imaging and resolving catalytic reactions
on a single nanocatalyst at nanometer resolution, which maps the
reactivity of different surface sites and uncovers diverse spatial
reactivity patterns at the nanoscale. |