Catalysts from cars and trucks have appeared all over the country in recent years. Catalysts are valuable because they contain precious metals – rhodium and palladium. In fact, palladium can be more expensive than gold. But what if we no longer have to put precious metals in the catalysts first? It may have been just a fantasy lately, but thanks to new technology (Researchers developed Catalytic condenser) developed at the University of Minnesota, it could become a reality sooner than we thought.
The first-class device, called the “catalytic capacitor“, is ready to break down long-standing barriers in the field of renewable energy. U of M researchers believe that the revolutionary invention can improve renewable energy conservation technology, renewable fuel production and sustainable materials production, while reducing dependence on limited precious metal reserves.
The research that forms the invention was published online in JACS Au, a leading American open-label journal of the American Chemical Society, where it was selected as the Editor’s Choice Publication. The team (Researchers developed Catalytic condenser) also works with the U of M Office of Technology Commercialization and has a temporary patent for the device. Catalysts, along with dozens of other products that most of us use every day, continue to rely on materials and chemical processing that have not changed for more than a hundred years. Many of these materials, such as the precious metals ruthenium, platinum, rhodium and palladium, have unique electronic surface properties. They can act as metals and metal oxides, making them critical in controlling chemical reactions.
This new electronic device converts one metal to behave the same as another so that it can be used as a catalyst to accelerate chemical reactions. This is the first to show that alternative materials that have been electronically modified to provide new properties can provide faster and more efficient chemical processing. These advances open the door to new catalytic technologies using inexpensive metal catalysts.
In developing this method for tuning the catalytic properties of alternative materials, researchers relied on their knowledge of how electrons act on surfaces. The team successfully tested the theory that adding and removing electrons in one material can create a metal oxide that mimics the properties of another material.
“Atoms don’t want to change their electron count, but we invented a catalytic capacitor that allows us to tune the number of electrons on the catalyst,” said Paul Dauenhauer, a MacArthur Fellow and professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Minnesota leading the research team. “This opens up a whole new opportunity to control chemistry and produce many materials as valuable materials.”
The catalytic capacitor device uses a combination of nanometer films to move and stabilize electrons on the catalyst surface. This design has a unique mechanism for combining metals and metal oxides in graphene to create a fast electron flow with chemically adjustable surfaces.
“We see the catalytic capacitor as a platform technology that can be implemented in many manufacturing applications,” said Dan Frisbie, professor and head of chemical engineering and materials sciences and a member of the research team. “Perspectives on basic design and new components can be transformed with almost any chemistry we can think of.”
Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of California, Santa Barbara were also involved in the study.
