| Project Detail |
The climate catastrophe urgently calls for greening and intensifying chemical reactors. Most chemical reactors use catalysts to speed up reactions, but their operation at steady-state temperature impairs rate, selectivity, and energy efficiency. To go beyond these limitations, applying short heat pulses theoretically leads to >100× higher reaction yield, lower energy use, and a controlled product distribution. However, pulsed heating has remained out of reach because it is hard to heat catalysts selectively and fast enough.
I break this paradigm and take control of dynamic thermo-catalysis by using light pulses and robust “plasmonic” materials that convert light to heat with nanoscale specificity. HEATPULSE comprises three work packages that tackle three challenges: (1) kinetics: modulate pulse timing for controlling reaction rate and selectivity, (2) localization: confine heat at thermal hotspots to boost energy efficiency, and (3) stability and performance: access high peak reaction rates by developing temperature-stable pulsed photocatalysts.
Ground-breaking innovations: (1) Access to a normally unreachable reaction landscape, with dynamic tunability of catalyst activity and selectivity; (2) Thermal hotspots break the limit of nanoscale heating and reach 3× higher peak temperatures with exponentially enhanced rates; (3) Metal nitride nano-arrays integrated with single-atom catalysts grant thermal stability beyond 1000 °C.
HEATPULSE represents a revolution in green reactor technology by shifting from burning fossil fuels to heat-pulsing with light, powered by renewables. The project will lead to the new field of “photocatalysis beyond the steady-state” at the crossroads of catalysis, nanophotonics, and materials science. With an accomplished track record in nanoscale light-driven chemistry, and as a pioneer in the field of pulsed catalysis at both experimental and theoretical level, I am uniquely suited to unlock the full potential of pulsed photothermal catal |
