Laboratory for Catalysis and Sustainable Chemistry
An important part of our research therefore focuses on providing understanding of a functioning catalyst with the ultimate aim to be able to design better catalytic processes. This reflects the general research theme within the laboratory, which is to provide understanding of a functioning respectively functional material. The laboratory is in particular strong in the development and application of in situ / operando time- and space-resolved measurements. For that, we maintain strong links to the synchrotron. We apply methods based on X-ray absorption and emission and X-ray photoemission spectroscopies, in addition to ptychographic imaging. High space-resolution is achieved in both the hard and soft X-ray regimes and diffractive and spectroscopic imaging is explored.
News
How to trick electrons to see the hidden face of crystals - LSK researchers try a trick for complete 3D analysis of submicron crystals
Breakthrough in 3D structure analysis by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) achieved by members of the LSK. Their paper published in Nature Communications will add a new dimension to TEM and thus is highlighted by Die Presse, Der Standard and phys.org.
Floating islands to convert sunlight into energy
A recent paper published in PNAS and highlighted by CNN proposes creating islands to produce a liquid fuel (methanol) by recycling atmospheric CO2.
On isothermality in some commonly used plug flow reactors for X-ray based investigations of catalysts
Understand reactor design and characterize their behavior to avoid unwanted sources of error in determining structure function relationships in catalysis.
Article published in Nature Catalysis - view on misconceptions and challenges in methane-to-methanol
Manoj Ravi, PhD student in the van Bokhoven group, warned the community about all the misconceptions and pitfalls he encountered while studying the conversion of methane to methanol and made it into Nature Catalysis!
ESRF Scientific Highlight 2018
Our work on active site structure in mordenite has been featured as one of the Scientific Highlights of 2018 by the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF).
BREAKTHROUGH
Recent advances in electron crystallography rank 5th breakthrough of the year 2018
Breakthrough - electron crystallography for everyone
Recent advances in electron crystallography published in Angewandte Chemie and highlighted by Science, Chemical & Engineering News and ScienceNews!Under the lead of LSK member, "Rapid structure determination of microcrystalline molecular compounds using electron diffraction", published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/anie.201811318 has attracted great attention in the chemistry community.
Cleaner emissions thanks to sponge-like structure
PSI researchers have developed a new catalytic converter for cleaning emissions from natural gas engines. It is very active even at low temperatures and remains that way over a long period of time. This allows natural gas to be burned in a cleaner, more climate-friendly way. Thus natural gas and biogas become more attractive as substitutes for petroleum products – for example, as fuel for cars.
A new paper by Vitaly Sushkevich and Dennis Palagin is accepted to Angewandte Chemie
A new paper by Vitaly Sushkevich and Dennis Palagin is accepted to Angewandte ChemieNew issue of Angewandte Chemie is featuring a paper entitled "Effect of Active Sites Structure on Activity of Copper Mordenite in Aerobic and Anaerobic Conversion of Methane to Methanol" by Vitaly and Dennis.