New door opened to understanding the catalysis of ammonia production

Research team investigates the reaction mechanism for catalytic ammonia production at PETRA III

26-Jan-2024 - A research team from Stockholm University, in collaboration with DESY and the Montanuniversität Leoben in Austria, has succeeded for the first time in investigating the surface of iron and ruthenium catalysts in the formation of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen; the results have been published ...

Bane and boon of oxygen mediating the performance of nickel catalysts in dry reforming of methane

Fundamental insights into the processes occurring at the catalyst surface

22-Jan-2024 - Catalysis is one of the key technologies in the chemical industry and has a wide-reaching impact on various aspects of our daily lives, including plastics manufacturing, drug synthesis, and production of both fertilizers and fuels. It is estimated that over 90% of chemical products are nowadays ...

How lab-made catalysts can help to get a grip on difficult greenhouse gases

09-Nov-2023 - Natural gas consists of light hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane. Such gases are more potent greenhouse gases than CO2, are constantly released into the atmosphere from natural gas wells, and are more difficult to store than, for example, their corresponding alcohols (methanol and ethanol, ...

Watching a Bimetallic Catalytic Surface in Action

Such insight on working catalysts is only possible to obtain using state-of-the-art experimental techniques under reaction conditions

01-Sep-2023 - A team of researchers from the Department of Interface Science at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society addressed the question: what happens to a Ga-promoted Cu surface under reaction conditions required for the synthesis of methanol? They found complex structural transformations of ...

Researchers “film” novel catalyst at work

15-Aug-2023 - A novel catalysis scheme enables chemical reactions that were previously virtually impossible. The method developed at the University of Bonn is also environmentally friendly and does not require rare and precious metals. The researchers recorded the exact course of the catalysis in a kind of ...

Surface analysis of catalyst particles in aqueous solutions

The results are relevant for the development of efficient photoelectrodes for the production of green hydrogen

25-Jul-2023 - Green hydrogen can be produced directly in a photoelectrochemical cell, splitting water with solar energy. However, this requires the development of super-efficient photoelectrodes that need to combine many talents at the same time: They must be excellent at converting sunlight into electricity, ...

Photocatalysis: Processes in charge separation recorded experimentally

The results provide clues to increase the efficiency of photocatalysts

11-Nov-2022 - Certain metal oxides are considered good candidates for photocatalysts to produce green hydrogen with sunlight. A Chinese team has now published exciting results on copper(I) oxide particles in Nature, to which a method developed at HZB contributed significantly. Transient surface photovoltage ...

Catalyst surface analysed at atomic resolution

Particles observed during the catalysis process

12-Jan-2022 - Catalyst surfaces have rarely been imaged in such detail before. And yet, every single atom can play a decisive role in catalytic activity. A German-Chinese research team has visualised the three-dimensional structure of the surface of catalyst nanoparticles at atomic resolution. This structure ...

Three-dimensional View of Catalysts in Action

Operando X-ray Spectroscopy Brings New Opportunities for Materials and Reaction Diagnostics

18-Dec-2020 - For understanding the structure and function of catalysts in action, researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), in cooperation with colleagues from the Swiss Light Source SLS of Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in ...

Catalyst deposition on fragile chips

17-Feb-2020 - Electrocatalysts can help to obtain chemicals from renewable raw materials or to use alternative energy sources. But testing new catalysts brings challenges. Researchers at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) and the University of Duisburg-Essen have developed a new method of depositing catalyst ...