A long time ago in a galaxy not too far from here, a voluminously haired Peter Stair took a young prospective faculty member out to dinner. Both Peter’s interest in surface science, as well as his growing interest in catalysis were one of the reason for the young prospect coming to Northwestern University. Skip forward many years, including joint struggles to work out leaks in the world’s first true UHV transmission electron microscope, head scratching to understand a published atomic oxygen source, many joint students and significant hair loss we arrive at 2022. This talk will look at a few of the steps along this road, looking at how early work on direct imaging of nanoparticle surfaces in the 1980’s progressed through UHV in-situ as well as controlled environment ex-situ determination of the surface structure of many materials, particularly oxides combined with DFT, to more recent work using the thermodynamics of oxide/metal interfaces to control catalysis, and also unexpected phenomena due to inductive effects from substrates and inhomogeneous charge transfer at metal/oxide interfaces.

From imaging to heterogeneous catalysis: Nanoparticles and supports

Fall 2022 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch in mid-September.

ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.