Eminent Surface Scientists speak at SynCat@Beijing

On September 6, 2017, dr Shamil Kamilovich Shaikhutdinov, head of the ‘Structure and Reactivity’ group at the Deptartment of Chemical Physics of the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society visited SynCat@Beijing. Shamil is an accomplished surface scientist whose work currently focuses on understanding the structure-reactivity relationships of well-defined thin oxide films grown on metal single-crystal supports.

Photo on the side: Next to Shamil (right), SynCat@Beijing also welcomed Prof Bing Yang from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), CAS

Shamil’s visit started with a short tour through the surface science and TEM facilities of SynCat@Beijing, during which he showed much interest in the UHV equipment, asked many questions about the type of experiments going on in our laboratories, and gave highly constructive suggestions to our surface science team in SynCat@Beijing.

After the lab tour, Shamil gave a lecture “Ultrathin Oxide Films on Metals: Relation to Catalysis”, which addressed the preparation and characterization of model catalysts as well as some typical examples of finding relationships between structure and reactivity on model catalysts. His lecture stimulated some interesting discussion and proved to be a good source of inspiration for our own future work here in SynCat.

After Shamil’s lecture, Professor Bing Yang presented his recent work on surface catalysis and operando characterization. In his talk, titled “Methanol Synthesis from CO₂ over single-size Copper Catalyst: Cluster Size vs Charge Transfer”, he reported a combined experimental and computational study on single-size Cu_n catalysts (n=3, 4, 20) in the sub-nanometer range supported on Al₂O₃ for hydrogenation of CO₂ at near atmospheric pressure. After his talk, he had discussion with Dr. Jian Xu about the possibility of future cooperation between Prof. Yang’s group and researchers at SynCat@Beijing.

Published on September 24, 2017