Investigation of ''birth, life, and death'' of metal-based catalysts

This exciting PhD project takes advantage of Durham's new lab-based operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) facility to look at the "birth, life and death" of metal-based catalysts of interest to industry.

Developing novel catalyst products with improved performance requires comprehensive understanding of catalysts' life cycles (i.e., preparation, activation, operation under normal and extreme conditions, deactivation, regeneration, and rejuvenation). This is difficult to infer from "pre-natal"/"post-mortem" data alone and can only be meaningfully achieved by studying catalysts under in situ/operando conditions in combination with detailed kinetic studies.

This PhD project aims at the investigation of ''birth, life, and death'' of metal-based catalysts that are of interest for several major industrial processes and are of relevance to the industrial partner Johnson Matthey. The investigation will take advantage of deploying newly available lab-based operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) capabilities that can provide information on the local structure, geometry, and oxidation state of metals, irrespective of a sample's crystallinity.

The structural alteration of the catalysts will be monitored during activation in hydrogen (i.e., ''birth of catalysts") and during long-term stability and ageing tests (i.e., ''life and death'' of catalysts) using a lab-based XAS instrument located here at Durham University. Recent studies have demonstrated the usefulness of operando lab-based XAS when studying catalytic processes that occur over a long time period (e.g., Co-based Fischer Tropsch catalysts; investigation of mono-, bi- and trimetallic CO2 hydrogenation catalysts containing Ni, Fe, and Cu).

Such long-time structural investigations of catalytic materials under process conditions are challenging to perform with synchrotron-based XAS.