Design and Synthesis Ordered Nanomaterials for Heterogeneous Catalysis

Abstract

Catalysis—the essential science for accelerating and directing chemical transformation—is the key to realizing environmentally friendly and economical processes for the conversion of fossil energy feedstocks. Catalysis is also the key to developing new technologies for converting alternative feedstocks, such as waste plastics, biomass, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water, to chemicals and fuels. The two grand challenges of heterogeneous catalysis, understanding mechanisms and dynamics of catalyzed reactions as well as the design and controlled synthesis of catalyst structures, require an atomic and electronic-level understanding of catalysts and catalytic processes. Due to their structural complexity, especially under reaction conditions, the catalytic active site and the molecule-catalyst interaction are often difficult to describe. This presentation will discuss our recent research on the synthesis, characterization, reaction study, and modeling of heterogeneous catalysts that are precisely synthesized at the atomic level using well-defined porous silica nanomaterials, intermetallic compounds, and metal-organic frameworks, which provide the means for meeting the two grand challenges of heterogeneous catalysis. This presentation will demonstrate that ordered nanomaterials could not only help the understanding of catalysis mechanisms but also reveal new catalytic phenomena. 

Biography

Dr. Huang received a B.S. in Chemistry from Nanjing University, China in 2000. After receiving an M.S. in 2002 also from Nanjing University, he started his Ph.D. research with Professor Mostafa A. El-Sayed at Georgia Institute of Technology and received his Ph.D. in 2007. Dr. Huang then began postdoctoral research with Professor Gabor A. Somorjai and Professor Peidong Yang at University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in August 2007. He joined the faculty at Iowa State in August 2011 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2017 and to Full Professor in 2021.