Fourth Meeting of the
Catalysis Club of Chicago 2011-2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
NOTE Tuesday date

Magianno's Little Italy
175 Old Orchard Shop Center
Skokie, IL
(847) 933-9555

Cost $45 Professionals
$20 Students/Post Docs

Designing Alloy Catalysts Based on Molecular Insights: Alloys for Hydrocarbon Reforming, Direct Electrochemical Oxidation of Hydrocarbons at Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, and Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Professor Suljo Linic
Department of Chemical Engineering
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI

Linic Research Group Website

Abstract

Alloys are an important class of materials that often exhibit unique physical and chemical characteristics, such as exceptional hardness or enhanced chemical reactivity. As such, alloys show promise for many applications including heterogeneous catalysis and electro-catalysis. While the potential for the utilization of alloys in heterogeneous catalysis and electro-catalysis is significant, predictive models relating the geometric structure of alloys to the chemical reactivity are lacking.

I will show a few examples where we used controlled experiments and quantum chemical density functional theory (DFT) calculations to indentify critical features of alloy sites that govern the local chemical and catalytic reactivity. I will show that by controlling these features of the active site, we can design improved catalysts. In particular, I will focus on development of Ni-based carbon-tolerant alloy catalysts for hydrocarbon reforming and Solid Oxide Fuel Cell applications. I will show how a molecular model for carbon-induced catalyst deactivation can guide us in the identification of superior alloy catalysts. I will also discuss our work on the development of Pt-based alloy materials for low temperature PEM fuel cells. Here, I will demonstrate that novel alloy catalysts can be identified by focusing on the electronic structure of the active site. I will show that by rationally manipulating the electronic structure by changing the local chemical environment of the active Pt site, we can identify a large number of promising alloy catalysts that exhibit higher stability and efficiencies compared to current state-of-the-art materials.