Date/Time
27.03.2025
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Location
Lecture Hall 55.02
Pfaffenwaldring 55
70569 Stuttgart
We are very happy to welcome within the CRC 1333 Colloquium Series:
Thursday, March 27, 2025, 2:00 – 3:00 pm
Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Lise-Meitner Group Leader)
Topic: „Controlling the mobility and placement of active sites in heterogeneous catalysts”
Her research focuses on the design of novel catalyst platforms for difficult transformations. Her work in the laboratory focuses on the development of new catalyst design strategies that begin to address long-standing challenges encountered in many desirable transformations limited by kinetic barriers or seemingly insurmountable selectivity challenges.
Abstract:
Heterogeneous catalysis can offer substantial practical advantages, especially for large-scale reactions, but rational optimization of catalytic performance remains challenging. While homogeneous catalysis involves identical transition metal centers with a well-defined ligand set, traditional heterogeneous catalysts feature a plethora of distinct sites with distinct activity and selectivity. Since metal centers can interact with one another over extended distances, not only the primary coordination environment of the metal needs to be carefully controlled, but also the arrangement of metal centers throughout the catalyst. Synthetic strategies that permit selective synthesis of multiple distinct metal arrangements with precision present substantial opportunities to increase catalyst performance. We found that structural differences between materials that are removed from the active site by eight chemical bonds or more have drastic effects on active site activity.
In addition to the role of active site placement in catalysis, we are also interest in the influence of mobility on performance. To that end, we developed a MOF-based platform in which phosphines are confined to large mesopores via charge-tethering. NMR experiments show that the phosphines have substantial mobility within the mesopores, which appears to be crucial to the performance of pore-confined phosphine ligated cobalt catalysts in hydroformylation reactions.
The CRC cordially invites all who are interested to the lecture.