Chemical Design Surfaces for Active Solid Catalysts

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the chemical design surfaces for active solid catalysts that can be regarded as a promising and scientific way to prepare well-defined active surfaces with excellent catalytic properties as well as to elucidate reaction mechanisms, including dynamic changes of active sites. These are new generation of catalysts resulting from scientific development at the boundary between homogeneous and heterogeneous chemistry. The use of such chemically and structurally controllable surface systems, rather than the more conventional supported catalysts with heterogeneous metal centers, can lead to novel information on the origins of catalysis. Once the essential processes of activity, selectivity, and specificity have been identified, it should be possible to incorporate this knowledge into the rational synthesis of practical catalysts that are deliberately tailored for specific reaction chemistries. Chemical surface design has strategic advantages in the synthesis of catalysts with novel and desired surface structures and compositions, and in the elucidation of heterogeneous catalysis on a molecular level.