Developing a Novel Magnetic Resonance Method to Characterise Molecular Dynamics inside Catalysts

催化是化学工业的核心，80%的工业化学品生产在其制造过程中需要催化技术。据估计，催化剂为全球经济贡献了约10万亿美元，其中包括每年500亿英镑。仅在英国。因此，有强烈的动机使催化过程更节能，并且对所需产物更具选择性，从而减少副产物或废物流的产生。我们的研究小组已经开发了一系列技术，许多基于磁共振方法，以探测多孔催化剂中的分子吸附和扩散。该CASE学生奖学金的重点是扩展快场循环NMR（一种多频NMR技术）的使用，以研究催化剂内部的分子动力学和分子-表面相互作用，并与我们已经在该小组中建立的技术一起开发其用途。了解反应物、中间体和产物分子在催化剂孔内以及与孔表面和催化活性位点如何相互作用是催化剂设计进步的核心。一旦该方法得到充分开发，它将被应用于一系列催化材料，以探索所获得的新见解可用于改善工艺性能的程度。

Catalysis lies at the heart of the chemical industry with 80% of industrial chemical production requiring catalytic technology within their manufacturing process. It is estimated that catalysis contributes around $10 trillion to the global economy, including £50 billion p.a. to the UK alone. As a result there is strong motivation to make catalytic processes more energy efficient, and more selective to the required product thereby reducing production of by-products or waste streams. Our research group has already developed a range of techniques, many based on magnetic resonance methods, to probe molecular adsorption and diffusion in porous catalysts. This CASE studentship is focussed on extending the use of fast-field cycling NMR (a multi-frequency NMR technique) to characterise molecular dynamics and molecule-surface interactions inside catalysts and to develop its use alongside techniques we have already established in the group. Understanding how reactants, intermediates and product molecules interact with each other inside the pores of a catalyst as well as with the pore surface and the catalytically active site is central to advances in catalyst design. Once the method is sufficiently developed, it will be applied to a range of catalytic materials to explore the extent to which the new insights obtained may be used to improve process performance.