AVS 62nd International Symposium & Exhibition
    Surface Science Tuesday Sessions
       Session SS+AS+EN-TuM

Invited Paper SS+AS+EN-TuM5
AVS 2014 Gaede-Langmuir Invited Talk: Models for Heterogeneous Catalysts: Complex Materials at the Atomic Level

Tuesday, October 20, 2015, 9:20 am, Room 113

Session: Mechanistic Insight of Surface Reactions: Catalysis, ALD, etc. - I
Presenter: Hajo Freund, Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Germany
Correspondent: Click to Email
Our understanding of catalysis, and in particular heterogeneous catalysis, is to a large extend based on the investigation of model systems. The enormous success of metal single crystal model surface chemistry, pioneered by physical chemists, is an outstanding example. Increasing the complexity of the models towards supported nanoparticles, resembling a real disperse metal catalyst, allows one to catch in the model some of the important aspects that cannot be covered by single crystals alone. One of the more important aspects is the support particle interface. We have developed strategies to prepare such model systems based on single crystalline oxide films, which are used as supports for metal, and oxide nanoparticles, which may be studied at the atomic level using the tools developed in surface science. However, those oxide films may also serve as reaction partners themselves, as they are models for SMSI states of metal catalyst. Using such model systems, we are able to study a number of fundamental questions of potential interest, such as reactivity as a function of particle size and structure, influence of support modification, as well as of the environment, i.e. ultra-vacuum or ambient conditions, onto reactivity. The thin oxide film approach allows us to prepare and study amorphous silica as well as 2D-zeolites. Those systems, in spite of their complexity, do lend themselves to theoretical modelling as has been demonstrated.