Rational Design and Enabling of High Performance Nanoarrays for Environmental Catalysis

Monolithic catalysts represent an important catalyst configuration which is widely used in industry. However, several issues associated with catalyst preparation such as low materials utilization efficiency, difficulty in microstructure control and lack of structure-property correlation have made it challenging for rational monolithic catalysts design to achieve their optimum performance. Besides, more and more stringent regulation has been imposed upon the automotive emission and developing high performance catalyst has therefore become an inevitable task. In this dissertation, we will first introduce the concept and showcase the fabrication of nano-array catalyst featuring high catalyst utilization efficiency. The monolithic nano-array catalysts exhibit high performance low temperature CO/NO/hydrocarbon oxidation. Detailed discussion will be focused on the rational catalytic activity adjustment by tunable nano-array geometry and composition. Catalytic reaction mechanism, selective doping effects and catalyst stability are further investigated by in-situ spectroscopy in tandem with the density functional theory calculation. Other applications of monolithic catalyst in the nano-array configuration have been demonstrated such as photocatalytic water treatment and water purification. With the demonstrated fabrication at industrial relevant scale, the adjustable catalytic activity and the identified reaction mechanisms, monolithic nano-array catalyst is believed to enable rational catalyst design for environmental applications ranging from automotive emission control to water treatment.