Presidential Young Investigator Award: Advanced Catalytic Processes and Materials Fabrication Engineering

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This Presidential Young Investigator award includes three areas of research: 1. Selectivity control with ultramicroporous materials. This effort concentrates on the design, fabrication, and application of inorganic-oxide-modified carbon molecular sieves. These composite materials have the molecular sieving properties of polymer-derived carbon and the high surface areas and other properties of inorganic oxides such as silica, alumina, titania, or zirconia. The initial project is to prepare a catalyst system to produce gasoline-range hydrocarbons from syngas (carbon monoxide and hydrogen) by incorporating sites that catalyze Fischer-Tropsch synthesis and hydrocracking inside an envelope of sieve. A model will be developed to describe the coupled mass transfer and chemical kinetics in this system. The model and the physical system will then be redesigned iteratively to locate the optimal system for this purpose. 2. Advanced catalytic materials. The fabrication of porous piezoelectric materials is being studied; these may be useful both as catalysts and as catalyst supports for the activation of saturated hydrocarbons. Also, the physical and electronic structure of the active site on the surface of rhodium-molybdenum on alumina is under investigation; this very active heterogeneous catalyst appears to chemically mimic homogeneous rhodium catalysts. 3. Electronic materials processing. The kinetics and mechanisms for pyrolytic, photolytic, and catalytic decompositions of organometalloid compounds of groups III and V are being studied; such reactions are central to CVD processes. Also, a system is under design for production of zinc-oxide films by oxidation of alkylzinc precursors; it is hoped this will lead to a method for the fabrication of two-dimensional superconducting oxides.