Personnel:

Peter Kracke, M.S. Graduate Student

Research Interests:
Pollution prevention through catalysis, fuel cells, fuel processing, polymers

Research Area:
Preparation of gold nanoclusters on non-oxide supports and their reactivity for CO oxidation

Traditional CO oxidation and water-gas shift (WGS) catalysts are typically noble metal nanoparticles dispersed on metal oxide supports. It has been shown that the support itself may participate in the catalytic reaction. One aspect that has been difficult to study is the nature of interaction between the noble metal and the oxide support.

An objective of this project is to evaluate the importance of the interaction between gold and its support through the study of the catalytic nature of the gold metal nanoclusters in the absence of a metal oxide support. For any comparison between oxide and non oxide supports to be meaningful the gold nanoclusters must be analogous to those found on the supports in traditional catalysts with particle size in the 1-4 nm size range. To this end, nanoparticles of gold are prepared on dendrimers, a special class of branched polymers. The activity of these gold nanoclusters for low temperature CO oxidation and other reactions is under investigation.

Education: