Midway evaluation in Chemical Engineering - André Philipp Wark

Event on Zoom

Title: New Insights into Catalysts for Electrochemically Driven Oxidation Reactions

Doctoral candidate: André Philipp Wark

Doctoral committee:
Dr. Egill Skúlason, Professor at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Iceland
Dr. Andrew J. Medford, Assistant Professor at the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, United States of America
Dr. Hannes Jónsson, Professor at the Faculty of Physical Sciences, University of Iceland

Abstract

Oxidation Reactions draw a large amount of attention in (photo-)electrocatalysis since they have yet not been fully understood both experimentally and theoretically.[1–6] Even the Oxygen Evolution Reaction (OER) which has been known for 100 years now is still a matter of debate between researchers and in literature.[7] Many different materials have been investigated over decades to find the ideal catalyst which has not been found yet.[4] Despite the fact that the OER is not fully understood, researchers are also interested in dealing with other oxidation reactions. Recently, the Nitrogen Oxidation Reaction (NOR) has received attention as a direct way to oxidise nitrogen N2 to nitrate NO3-.[8–11] However, the number of both experimental and theoretical studies so far is limited and a systematic understanding of reactivity and trends with respect to certain material classes is demanded.
Therefore, this research project deals with both the OER and NOR. The study on the OER is to investigate and identify the active centres of an iron phthalocyanine- manganese oxide (FePc-MnOx) and graphite-manganese oxide (HOPG-MnOx) hybrid materials.[12,13] The first material has been proven to be an efficient catalyst for the OER with almost no overpotential. Our DFT studies on this material reveal that the active sites of this material are located at the interface between FePc and MnO¬x and the edges of the MnOx which is in good agreement with microscopic measurements. The second project deals with revealing trends of the NOR on different rutile-typed materials after a detailed study in our group showed that TiO2(110) can favour the NOR towards the competing OER which even promotes the NOR. Thermodynamic studies on IrO2(110), RuO2(110) and MoO2(110) show that the OER possibly promotes the NOR, too.

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