Sir John Meurig Thomas, University of Cambridge UK
(The Royal Institution of Great Britain, London and Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge)

The advantages and potential of single-site solid catalysts, designed to interest all branches of the subject, from the physical and inorganic to the organic and computational

It is often explicitly stated, but far more frequently implied, that solid catalysts, in contrast to homogeneous ones, possess a spectrum of active sites each with its own energetics, activity and selectivity. It is further argued that solid catalysts, notwithstanding the ease of separation of products from reactants and recyclability that they confer, are intrinsically inferior in overall catalytic performance to their homogeneous analogues or to enzymes.

We shall demonstrate that there is a significant and growing number of situations in which isolated, single-site heterogeneous catalysts (SSHC) may be designed, and where their structure and performance under operating conditions may be experimentally probed. Nanoporous and nanoparticulate materials, appropriately prepared or functionalised, loom large as SSHC, and are well suited to meet many of the challenges of an environmentally conscious age, like facilitating low-temperature, regio-, shape-, and enantio-selective conversions of key organic compounds under benign or sustainable conditions.

There is abundant scope (to be illustrated) for the solid-state and materials chemist to exploit the strategy that lies behind the concept of SSHC and thereby to design, de novo, a wide variety of different kinds of mono-functional and bi-functional solid catalysts.

For more information contact Dr. Mostafa El-Sayed (404-894-0292).