In Situ and Operando Methods for Understanding Catalyzed Reactions

The field of electron microscopy has seen dramatic advances in the past decade, with the development of advanced electron optics such as aberration-correctors and source monchromators, new detector modalities and advances in sample manipulation and probing. In this talk, I will detail activities within the Electron Microscopy Group at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials, with a specific focus on understanding the structure, composition and performance of heterogenous catalysts in situ and in operando conditions. In the first portion of the talk, I will describe how environmental transmission electron microscopy can be used to understand the nucleation, growth and self-assembly of carbon nanotubes into vertically aligned ‘forests’, a configuration of high interest in multiple applications.  In the second portion, I detail new methods that are being developed to characterize working catalysts in operando using a closed-cell micro reactor which allows imaging at atmospheric pressure. Finally, I will describe how this same micro reactor allows correlated measurements to be obtained from both electron microscopy and x-ray spectroscopy and diffraction, and will show how this integrated capability allows comprehensive characterization of nearly all structural aspects of interest in catalysis.

Bio: Eric Stach leads the Electron Microscopy Group in the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Virginia. He has held positions as Staff Scientist and Principal Investigator at the National Center for Electron Microscopy at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and as Associate then Full Professor at Purdue University, where he retains an Adjunct appointment. His research interests focus on the development and application of electron microscopy techniques to solve materials problems in catalysis, energy storage materials and  in nanostructure nucleation and growth.