The colloquium will be streamed online.
Prof. Sven Askes, VU Amsterdam
Invited by Prof. Emiliano Cortés and Prof. Frédéric Laquai
What can pulsed lasers do for chemical conversion, other than use them to study catalytic mechanisms, energy flow, and material properties? What would happen if we used pulsed lasers to drive catalysis? In this talk, I will address this central question.
Most conventional reactors in chemical industry use catalyst nanomaterials to speed up reactions, but their operation at a steady-state temperature impedes our ability to improve their rate, selectivity, and energy efficiency [1]. To go beyond these limitations, I will demonstrate how applying short optical heat-pulses, specifically to the catalyst material, can lead to "dynamic" reaction conditions that are ordinarily out of reach [2]. I will show how the different control knobs of pulsed light (how intense, how long, how often) enables tuning of rate, energy efficiency, and selectivity through the kinetic control of adsorbed reactants and intermediates. These results pave the way to a more sustainable and process-intense operation of catalytic reactors.
[1] M. Monai, S. H. C. Askes, et al. ACS Catalysis 2026, DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.5c07014
[2] A. Baldi and S. H. C. Askes. Pulsed Photothermal Heterogeneous Catalysis. ACS Catalysis 2023, 13 (5), 3419–3432, DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.2c05435