Engineering Functional Materials for Catalytic Smart Microreactors

最近在制造具有微米级通道的非常小的化学反应器方面取得了巨大的进展。与大型反应器相比，这些微反应器可以快速评估新的化学反应。目前制造这种反应器的方法是基于昂贵和污染的电子制造技术。该项目将开发更快、更便宜和多功能的设备，具有更广泛的潜在应用范围。该项目涉及将新的制造方法与最近开发的催化剂相结合，以提供新颖高效的微反应器。它是材料科学、工程和化学的融合，涉及机械和材料工程师（利物浦）、化学家和表面科学家（达勒姆）、聚合物和有机化学家和化学工程师（巴斯）。这些小组的互补性专门知识对方案的成功至关重要。在该项目的第一阶段，利物浦集团将利用他们在选择性激光熔化（SLM）和数字光处理（DLP）方面的经验，在单个单元中制造含有小于100微米通道的新型反应器，用于反应物和热交换流体。这些将被评估为潜在的工业反应器，使用巴斯大学开发的含有磁性纳米颗粒的新型催化剂。在第二阶段，反应物通道将使用达勒姆大学的等离子体技术进行功能化，并使用巴斯大学开发的化学技术将其转化为催化活性物质。将进行一系列测试反应，并通过多种方法分析其性能。这将需要开发原位方法，以优化反应堆的设计，并说明对材料、化学和制药工业的潜在好处。最终的结果将是一个多功能反应器与集成分析优化选择的化学反应直接相关的精细化工行业。

There has been tremendous recent progress in manufacturing very small chemical reactors with channels of the order of micrometres in size. These microreactors allow rapid evaluation of new chemical reactions compared with larger units. The current methods of manufacturing of such reactors are based on expensive and polluting electronics manufacturing techniques. This project will develop faster, cheaper and multifunctional devices with much wider range of potential application. This project involves combining new fabrication methods with recently developed catalysts to provide novel and efficient microreactors. It is a blend of materials science, engineering and chemistry involving mechanical and materials engineers (Liverpool), chemists and surface scientists (Durham) and polymer and organic chemists and chemical engineers (Bath). The complementary expertise of these groups is vital to the success of the programme.The Liverpool group in the first stage of the project will use their experience in Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and Digital Light Processing (DLP) to fabricate novel reactors containing channels < 100 microns in size for reactant and heat exchange fluids in a single unit. These will be evaluated as potential industrial reactors using novel catalysts developed at Bath involving magnetic nanoparticles. In the second stage, the reactant channels will be functionalised using plasma techniques at Durham and converted to catalytically active species using chemistry developed at Bath. A series of test reactions will be performed and the performance analysed by a number of methods. These will require the development of in-situ methods, in order to optimise the design of the reactors and to illustrate the potential benefits to the materials, chemical and pharmaceutical industries. The end result will be a multifunctional reactor with integrated analytics optimised for selected chemical reactions of immediate relevance to the fine chemicals industries.