Symposium QQ-Catalytic Materials for Energy

Transformative ways to increase efficiency, sustainability, and diversity in energy production, conversion and storage are needed to meet growing demand in energy and to reduce our society’s carbon footprint. Catalytic materials will play a key role here by facilitating desirable chemical transformations. Bringing the materials science perspective into catalyst discovery provides many opportunities in synthesis, characterization, and use of novel materials in energy applications. However, many of the current applications rely heavily on the use of precious metals, an approach which cannot be sustainable in long terms. Also, novel applications as the catalytic conversion of biomass in aqueous media require new, perhaps non-oxide, hydrothermally stable catalyst supports. To make a sizable contribution to addressing the society’s energy related issues, materials strategies to reduce the cost by employing more abundant elements as well as improved stability, are highly desirable. Just to name two examples: an energy and materials cost efficient conversion of abundant natural gas could significantly contribute to the production of synthetic fuels and a broad spectrum of chemicals in nearest terms; a highly efficient artificial photosynthesis of fuels via water splitting and CO2 reduction can be the holy grail of clean energy, but the challenge is to achieve high enough solar-energy conversion efficiency. All these applications, from catalysis to electro- to photocatalysis to storage in batteries have one common: design and development of new classes of materials. Advances in materials synthesis, atomic level characterization and theoretical/computational methods (and interconnecting these components) are poised to accelerate the discovery of novel materials for use as catalysts in energy applications. This symposium is aimed at bringing together researchers in materials science, synthesis, heterogeneous catalysis, electrocatalysis, and photocatalysis to highlight recent progresses and discuss challenges and opportunities in the materials aspect of catalysis research for energy applications.

Topics will include:

Sunlight to fuels via photocatalytic materials
Catalysis by materials with well-defined structures
Characterization of materials for catalysis in energy
Theory and modeling of materials for catalysis in energy
Materials for catalytic production of fuels and chemicals
Metals, alloys, and non-precious-metal materials for electrocatalysis
Synthesis in control of morphology, size, shape, interface, and pore structure

Invited Speakers:

QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _0 (Leibniz-Institut für Katalyse - LIKAT, Rostock, Germany)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _1 (Princeton University, USA)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _2 (Johns Hopkins University, USA)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _3 (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _4 (Ford Motor Company, USA)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _5 (University of Wisconsin Madison, USA)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _6 (University of Minnesota, USA)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _7 (Shell International, Netherlands)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _8 (TU Delft, Netherlands)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _9 (Argonne National Laboratory, USA)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _10 (Brown University, USA)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _11 (ETH Zürich and The Swiss Light Source, Switzerland)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _12 (Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Germany)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _13 (University of Houston, USA)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _14 (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _15 (Argonne National Laboratory, USA)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _16 (Zhejiang University, China)
QQ_Catalytic Materials for Energy _17 (University of California, Riverside, USA)