News

On Wednesday 29 April, we will host the next Chemistry Seminar in the series, delivered by Dr Robert Menzel from the University of Leeds.

The seminar will take place in G. O. Jones Lecture Theatre, from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm.

For more details about Dr Menzel's profile and research interests, please visit his webpage: Link

His publication record can be found here: Link

We hope to see you there!

Title: Graphene Foams as Nanocatalyst Supports for Chemical Transformations in Flow

Sponge-like graphene foams are emerging as powerful, electro-responsive porous supports for catalyst nanoparticles, offering finely tunable microstructures and surface chemistries. Here, we design graphene foams with distinctly engineered internal architectures (e.g., spherical, lamellar, cellular) through templated assembly of heteroatom-doped (N, S, B) graphene derivatives.

Graphene foams are functionalized with a broad library of catalytic nanoparticles, ranging from monometallic systems (Cu, Ru, Pt, Ni) to compositionally complex structures such as bimetallic alloys, high entropy alloys, and mixed metal oxides.[1,2] Metal nanoparticle functionalization is achieved through gas-phase deposition of molecular metal precursors into the pre-designed foam structures, followed by ultra-fast, ultra-high-temperature resistive heating (>2000 °C). The rapid, thermal precursor conversion process provides excellent control over nanoparticle size, atomic mixing, and alloy formation, while preserving the intricate foam microstructures.[1]

The resulting metal-graphene hybrids are studied using advanced characterization, including atomically resolved STEM and STEM-EDX, to map nanoscale structure and elemental distributions. To gain further mechanistic insights, we employ semi-empirical DFT to probe the impact of graphitic surface defects on precursor binding, metal-support charge transfer, NP formation, and ultimately catalytic behaviour.

Functional performance is evaluated across several chemical transformations, including high-pressure CO₂ capture and fine chemical synthesis.[2,3] For representative catalytic reactions, nanoparticle-functionalised, lamellar graphene foams are further assessed in continuous flow, enabling systematic structure-function investigations of catalyst activity, lifetime, and deactivation pathways under oxidative and reductive reaction environments.

References

[1] D. Xia, J. Mannering, R. Menzel et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 146 (2024), 159–169.

[2] J. Mannering, R. Brydson, R. Menzel et al., Adv. Mater., 33(2021), 2008307.

[3] D. Xia, D Iruretagoyena, R. Menzel et al., Adv. Funct. Mater., 30(2020), 2002788.