Seeking a breakthrough on catalysts
They have been a fundamental part of modern industry for more than a century, but the development of new catalysts to speed chemical processes has remained frustratingly hit-or-miss. Now, a group of Harvard researchers is approaching the problem in an entirely new way. Working with colleagues at several national laboratories and other partnering institutions, researchers at the Department of Energy-funded Energy Frontier Research Center’s Integrated Mesoscale Architectures for Sustainable Catalysis (IMASC) at Harvard are combining tightly-controlled experimental conditions and computational tools to develop novel methods for developing catalysts and new ways to understand the process of catalysis. Led by Cynthia Friend, the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science and director of the Rowland Institute, the IMASC researchers have gained new insight into exactly how catalysis works — findings that could play an important role in the design and development of more energy-efficient catalysts. The work is described in...