PhD Studentship – Designing Multifunctional Nanoparticles for Sustainable Catalysis

Applications will be considered in the order that they are received, and the position will be considered filled when a suitable candidate has been identified

PhD Description:

Engineering multifunctional active sites within adaptable pore architectures affords a range of novel and tuneable single-site heterogeneous catalysts, which have demonstrated considerable advantages, in terms of their high atom-efficiency and targeted selectivity in several industrially demanding catalytic transformations. Metal nanoparticles (NPs) have been a progressive area of research within the field of heterogeneous catalysis in recent years due to their remarkable potential in a variety of organic transformations, including industrially significant aerobic oxidations. The project will focus on the design of catalytically active NPs and developing wider synthetic strategies to control the size, morphology and shape of the particles at the atomic and molecular level.
The project will further seek to evaluate the selective conversion of the industrial feedstock, KA oil, to cyclohexanone with a view to achieving high yields using continuous-flow chemistry by utilizing the designed metal nanoparticle catalysts. Detailed spectroscopic characterization of the nature of the active sites at the molecular level, coupled with aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy will also be undertaken to regulate the morphology, shape and size of the metal nanoparticles. Identifying the intrinsic environment of the active site and developing strategies to control their coordination geometry at the molecular level, will facilitate structure-property correlations to be established. It is envisaged that probing the origins of the catalytic synergy between multifunctional active centres in porous solids would facilitate an in-depth understanding of mechanistic pathways at a molecular level, thus enabling rational design with intrinsic control on site-isolation for enhanced catalytic turnovers.

For further information and suggested reading:

1. C. S. Hinde, D. Ansovini, P. P. Wells, G. Collins, S. Van Aswegen, J. D. Holmes, R. Raja, ACS Catalysis, 2015, 5, 3807-3816.
2. A. M. Gill, C. S. Hinde, R. K. Leary, M. E. Potter, A. Jouve, P. P. Wells, P. A. Midgley, J. M. Thomas, R. Raja, ChemSusChem, 2016, 9, 423-427.