(6k) Impacts of Metal-Adsorbate Bonds on Photon Activation Mechanism and Nanoparticle Reconstruction in Heterogeneous Catalysis

More than 80% of modern industrial chemical processes utilize heterogeneous catalysts, including the production and processing of fuel, pollution mitigation, and commodity chemical production. The control of selectivity in complex chemical reaction networks has become the focus of heterogeneous catalysis in the 21^st century, in order to decrease unwanted byproducts and to increase energy efficiency and sustainability. My work at UC-Riverside has focused on several approaches to determine how molecules interact with catalytic metal surfaces, and ways to specifically activate targeted molecules on the surface, with the goal of achieving high catalytic selectivity. These approaches include: utilizing photocatalysis in order to activate targeted strong metal-adsorbate bonds by matching photon wavelength with bond energies of hybridized metal-adsorbate bonds, modifying metal-support interfaces to efficiently remove atmospheric contaminants in confined space pollution control applications, and exploiting in-situ spectroscopy techniques with a correlated analysis of reactivity in order to reveal catalytic active sites. My future work will include utilizing in-situprobes to reveal fundamental insights of catalytic processes for sustainable useful chemical production.

Research Interests:

Heterogeneous catalysis, In-situ spectroscopy, selective chemical production, conversion of solar to chemical energy

Teaching Interests:

Preferences: Chemical Kinetics, Catalysis & Reaction Engineering, Physical Chemistry, Thermodynamics, Transport Phenomena, but would be open to teaching most undergraduate courses.

Selected Publications:

[1] Kale, M. J.; Christopher, P. Plasmons at the interface. Science 2015, 349, 587-588.

[2] Kale, M. J.; Avanesian, T.; Xin, H.; Yan, J.; Christopher, P. Controlling Catalytic Selectivity on Metal Nanoparticles by Direct Photoexcitation of Adsorbate-Metal Bonds. Nano Letters 2014, 14, 5405-5412.

[3] Kale, M. J.; Avanesian, T.; Christopher, P. Direct Photocatalysis by Plasmonic Nanostructures. ACS Catalysis 2014, 4, 116â??128.

[4] Kale, M. J.; Christopher, P. Utilizing quantitative in-situ FTIR spectroscopy to identify well-coordinated Pt atoms as the active site for CO oxidation on Al₂O₃ supported Pt catalysts. In Review.

[5] Kale, M. J.; Gidcumb, D.; Christopher, P. Evaluation of Precious Metal Catalyst Stability for Confined Space Pollution Control. In Preparation.