synthesis and surface characterization of carbon nanotubes and novel silica-based nanoporous materials for adsorption and heterogeneous catalysis

碳纳米管和二氧化硅基纳米多孔材料是纳米科学和工程的重要组成部分，因此正在为一系列新材料的开发铺平道路，这些新材料将被用作新的化学和生化过程和技术的基石。曲面和 定义纳米管和纳米结构的中间相强烈地影响并往往主导着它们的行为。表面表征是控制它们的关键，因此是进一步发展的关键。最近，我们通过CFI赠款(Leaders Opportunity Fund计划)获得了用于纳米多孔材料表面表征的最先进的基础设施设备。这将大大提高我们在理解纳米多孔材料中复杂的吸附/扩散和催化现象方面获得关键信息的能力。 在这项计划中，我们将合成和表征碳纳米管和新型介孔结构纳米孔材料的活性表面。所提出的表征的最终目的是将吸附/扩散特性与碳纳米管和新型纳米孔复合材料的结构联系起来。这将使我们能够以受控的方式改进材料孔系统，以获得特定应用所需的性能。这项研究的独创性源于特定的方法，这些方法将用于表征我们实验室生产的材料，并将这些固体的性质与特定应用领域的要求联系起来，例如基于吸附和层析的气体和液体分离，以及与生物燃料合成相关的反应的多相催化。

Carbon nanotubes and silica-based nanoporous materials are an important part of nanoscale science and engineering and, as such, are paving the way for the development of a wide array of new materials, which will be used as building blocks for novel chemical and biochemical processes and technologies. The surfaces and interphases that define nanotubes and nanostructures strongly influence, and often dominate, their behavior. Surface characterization is key to their control and therefore cruical to further advance. Recently, we have acquired state-of-the-art infrastructure equipment for surface characterization of nanoporous materials through the CFI grant (Leaders Opportunity Fund program). This will greatly enhance our capabilities to obtain critical information in understanding complex adsorption/diffusion and catalytic phenomena in nanoporous materials. In this proposal we will synthesize and characterize active surfaces of carbon nanotubes and novel mesostructured nanoporous materials. The ultimate objective of the proposed characterizations is to relate adsorption/diffusion properties to the structure of CNT's and novel nanoporous, composite materials. This will allow us to refine the material pore system in a controlled way to obtain the properties required for specific applications. The originality of the research stems from the specific methodology that will be used to characterize materials produced in our labs and to relate the properties of these solids to the requirements of specific fields of application, such as gas and liquid separations, based on adsorption and chromatography and the heterogeneous catalysis of reactions related to bio-fuel synthesis.