(439d) A “Cerious” Collaboration on Supported Metals and Much More

The main subject of this talk will outline my scientific (and personal) interaction with Ray Gorte, which began almost 20 years ago with the study of ceria-zirconia based systems for next generation car converters, [1] during which time we shared challenges and rewards, as well as established an ever-growing network of collaborators. The subsequent step was directed towards the development of more precise material architectures with hierarchical order, leading to our self-establishment among the pioneers in the use of core-shell structures. [2,3] The talk will provide the chance to retrace all the stages of our common path in this field, revisiting in retrospective the dawn of numerous stimulating discussions on the type of metal-support interactions, how these can be involved to stabilize metal nanoparticles and to change their reactivity, and how much ground research has covered since then. Finally, there will be a mentioning of more recent interest of my group, embracing sustainable single atom [4] and metal free catalysis [5], and plasmonic based materials [6] for advanced chemical synthesis and solar fuel production, where ALD facilities deeply and used by Gorte’s group in the last years have been critical for success. [7]

Acknowledgements: The European Union's Horizon 2020 project SAN4Fuel (HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-03-01: 101079384) is acknowledged for financial support.

[1] Chem. Mater. 2006, 18, 5363

[2] Science 2012, 337, 713.

[3] Nature Communications 2016 article number: 13549.

[4] Adv. Mater. 2019, 31, n° 1900323

[5] Chem, 2018, 4, 106

[6] Science Adv. 2020, 46, eabc9923.

[7] J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2020, 142, 10373–10382