Symposium ES05-Cooperative Catalysis for Energy and Environmental Applications

The development of highly efficient heterogeneous catalysts is at the core of applications such as, energy storage and conversion, facile fuel production, valuable chemical transformation and environmental remediation. Surfaces and interfaces where there exists cooperation between two or more functional sites/phases has been identified to be crucial for many catalytic processes with the desirable catalytic properties of high activity, durability, and selectivity. For example, two or more strongly-coupled catalytic sites can modify the reaction pathway as each site can activate a part of reactant/intermediate, allowing the optimization of reaction kinetics and selectivity. The understanding of these cooperative interactions at surfaces and interfaces has been greatly accelerated by recent progress in controlled synthesis of well-defined materials at multiple lengths (molecular/single-atom, cluster, nanoparticles and macroscale materials), advanced characterization technologies with in-situ or operando probes, multiscale simulation and calculation methods. This symposium is designed to highlight the most recent trends in the design, synthesis and characterization of cooperative catalysts for energy and environmental applications, such as water splitting, CO₂-to-fuel conversion, N₂ fixation, natural gas utilization, biomass conversion, fuel cells, vehicle exhaust and water pollutant treatment, etc. This symposium will provide an interactive forum for scientists from various fields who are interested in developing future novel cooperative catalysis as well as in the advanced characterization of cooperative catalytic processes at surfaces and interfaces. Heterogeneous catalysis, electrocatalysis and photocatalysis boosted by cooperative interactions at interfaces and surfaces will be highlighted.This symposium hopes it will benefit materials scientists from various backgrounds, and help encourage the implementation of predictive design, smart synthesis/control and advanced characterization approaches to advance the cooperative catalysis for energy and environmental applications.

Topics will include:

Design, synthesis, characterization and modeling related to catalytic processes at interfacial and surface
Novel approaches to synthesize the next-generation high-efficient nanocatalysts
Structural characterization of complex surfaces and interfaces
Development of catalytic system with cooperative interactions between sites/phases
Computational work demonstrating the reactivity and promise of interfacial sites
In-situ characterization of catalytic reaciton and conversion processes, such as water splitting, CO2-to-fuel conversion, N2 fixation, shale gas utilization, biomass conversion, fuel cells, solid oxide fuel cells etc..
New opportunities for future development of cooperative catalytic materials, such as advanced computing techniques and big data techniques etc.