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Ce contenu n'est pas disponible en français.Scientific Highlights
New catalysts for pharmaceutical companies
In partnership with Roche, PSI scientists are developing new, potentially more efficient catalysts for manufacturing active substances for drug therapies.
Watch them growing: New mechanistic insights into catalytic methane coupling
Methane valorization is a promising technology to utilize this platform compound to produce aromatics and hydrocarbons. Researchers from PSI and ETH Zürich unveiled this reaction mechanism and observed the molecular growth from the ground up. Besides stepwise CH3 addition, novel routes involving the dimerization of resonantly stabilized propargyl (C3H3) radicals to benzene (C6H6) were identified. These mechanistic insights will aid the development of valorisation strategies.
The dynamics of overlayer formation on catalyst nanoparticles and strong metal-support interaction
The editors at Nature Communications have put together an Editors’ Highlights webpage of recent research called “Catalysis” and chose to feature Arik Beck's et al. article, entitled “The dynamics of overlayer formation on catalyst nanoparticles and strong metal-support interaction”.
PUBLISHED IN NATURE: A stable low-temperature H2-production catalyst by crowding Pt on α-MoC
Platinum isolated atoms and clusters supported on molybdenum carbide have been extensively characterized. The presence of both species is essential to boost the stability, so that the catalysts displays high metal-normalized turnover number of 4,300,000 moles of hydrogen per mole of platinum
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).