Date: Wednesday, February 14
Time: 12pm
Location: EN 3076
Speaker: Daniel Harris, Department of Chemistry
Title of Talk: Controlling Metal and Carbon Compositions in Transition Metal Carbides and its Effects on Hydrogenation of Carbon Dioxide
CO2 reduction is a challenging yet important process due to environmental concerns and utilizing this waste product as a chemical feedstock. Electrochemical reduction and hydrogenation are the two main routes that are being investigate for CO2 reduction. Both routes traditionally use a catalyst such as copper, gold, and silver but they all suffer from poor activity, selectivity, and stability. By using metal carbides as a catalyst and/or support, we can improve upon the activity, selectivity, and stability of this process by fine tuning the catalyst and support interactions. Metal carbides are known to be incredibly stable and active catalysts for reactions such as oxygen reduction reaction, hydrogen evolution reaction, and hydrodenitrogenation. By changing the metal nanoparticles and carbide support we’ve observed changes in selectivity and activity for CO2 hydrogenation. We have looked into the structure and electronics of the materials by using a variety of techniques such as XRD, TEM, SEM, and plan on using XPS and in-situ XPS in the future. Finally by changing the metal to carbon ratio of the carbide and size of the metal nanoparticles, we can potentially further tune the activity and selectivity of these carbide catalyst systems for CO2 hydrogenation.