Abstract
Catalysis is a key science for sustainable development, with a promising future. The chemical industry of the 21st century will be using increasingly efficient processes based on more and more varied resources (from oil to biomass). This calls for process intensification (reducing the number of operating units involved in product synthesis) and the development of catalytic processes, which are less energy-intensive and more selective. This is why heterogeneous catalysis, with the advantage of keeping reactants and active phase physically separate, is a favored approach in industry. However, the latter suffers from the mainly empirical development of this type of catalyst, due to the complexity of solid phases. In recent years, numerous research studies have shown that controlled surface chemistry, supported by advanced spectroscopic and theoretical techniques, can generate - (more) homogeneously - sites of known structures on the surface of materials; the latter often demonstrate superior catalytic performance to catalysts prepared by more conventional routes or their homogeneous counterparts [1, 2].This approach enables us to understand the reactivity of surface sites on a molecular scale, and thus to develop a rational - structure approach to these catalysts.
This seminar will present our results in the field of hydrocarbon conversion andCO2 hydrogenation, and show how understanding surface chemistry at the molecular level enables us to develop " heterogeneous " catalysts using more rational approaches [1, 2], and to provide information on existing industrial catalysts [3].
