Catalyzing discovery
In a trio of studies published earlier this month, researchers at the Energy Frontier Research Center’s (EFRC) Integrated Mesoscale Architectures for Sustainable Catalysis (IMASC) at Harvard have shown that the process of catalysis is more dynamic than previously imagined, and that molecular forces can vastly influence the process. The first, published in Nature Materials, showed that contrary to the way the process was long believed to happen, catalysts are capable of restructuring their surfaces during reactions, and then returning to their normal state. Catalysts have been a fundamental part of modern industrial processes for more than a century, but the development of new catalysts to speed up chemical processes has remained inconsistent. To more fully understand precisely how the catalysts work, and to aid in the development of new catalytic materials, Cynthia Friend, director of IMASC, the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science, and colleagues from the Lawrence...