Interface Science and Catalysis

Contact: Peter Sutter

The world is facing unprecedented challenges in satisfying a rapidly growing demand for energy while reducing negative impacts on the global climate system and the environment. Any solution to these issues will necessarily involve the development of renewable energy sources, together with new strategies for efficient energy utilization and sustainable (‘green’) manufacturing processes. Catalytic chemistry already plays an important role in all of these areas, but new catalysts providing improved reactivity and selectivity at dramatically reduced cost need to be developed to enable the required transformations of processes and economies on a global scale.

Nanoscience has the potential to fundamentally alter the approach to catalyst design from the traditional empirical methods to a rational design strategy based on a fundamental understanding of the relevant microscopic processes. Interface nanoscience contributes new approaches, tools, and techniques to rational catalyst design. The ability to assemble and characterize model catalysts with atomic-scale precision promises performance gains by discovering and exploiting support interactions, specific active sites, and size-dependent behavior at the nanoscale. Harnessing atomic-scale processes also requires recognition of the fact that key properties, such the active phase of a catalyst may depend on the reaction conditions and may be continuously modified in reactive environments, particularly if the active catalyst has nanometer-scale dimensions.

Our research program on Interface Science and Catalysis aims to identify and quantify nanoscale phenomena that can be exploited to boost the reactivity of future generations of energy-relevant catalysts, electrocatalysts, and photocatalysts. Our approach has two defining characteristics: a strong focus on heterogeneous catalysis-inspired model systems fabricated and characterized with atomic-scale precision; and the in-situ observation of the dynamic restructuring of these systems under reaction conditions. Research in both areas will be enabled by a third component, the development of new experimental techniques and tools, which also provide far-reaching synergies between the CFN-internal science thrust, our User’s Program, and collaborations with catalysis scientists at and outside BNL.

Associated Group Facilities

• Proximal Probes Facility

Group Members

• Peter Sutter, Scientist and Group Leader
• Jerzy Sadowski, Associate Scientist
• David Starr, Assistant Scientist
• Percy Zahl, Scientific Associate
• Danda Acharya, Postdoctoral Research Associate
• Erik Muller, Postdoctoral Research Associate
• Georgy Nazin, Goldhaber Distinguished Fellow
• Birol Ozturk, Postdoctoral Research Associate

Last Modified: May 6, 2008
Please forward all questions about this site to: Stephen Giordano.

One of ten national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies and national security. Brookhaven Lab also builds and operates major scientific facilities available to university, industry and government researchers. Brookhaven is operated and managed for DOE’s Office of Science by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited-liability company founded by Stony Brook University, the largest academic user of Laboratory facilities, and Battelle, a nonprofit, applied science and technology organization.

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