SURFACE SCIENCE and CATALYSIS

Faculty: Mullins

Emphasis is placed on understanding the fundamentals of how and why catalysts work, with a long-term objective of improving industrial catalyst design, manufacturing, and performance. Laboratory facilities in support of catalytic research include three ultrahigh vacuum systems equipped to do Auger electron spectroscopy, low-energy-electron-diffraction, high-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy, scanning Auger electron spectroscopy, temperature programmed desorption, and precision four-point surface conductivity measurements.

Additionally, a Brucker FTIR, a Cahn microbalance, an HP gas chromatograph, and several custom-built microreactors are available for catalytic studies. Research support for catalysis and surface science has been provided by the National Science Foundation, the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund, the 3M Corporation, the Ford Motor Company, and the Michigan Research Excellence Fund.

Faculty and graduate students in chemical engineering play an active role in the Solid and Electronic Materials research group, which has participants from the chemical, electrical, and metallurgical and materials engineering departments, as well as the chemistry, physics, and mathematics departments. This group meets every two weeks during the academic year when a seminar is presented to the group by either an external visitor, a graduate student, or a faculty member. These group meetings have led to several collaborative projects among faculty in different departments.

Selected Equipment

• Ultrahigh vacuum system equipped for Auger spectroscopy, low-energy electron diffraction, temperature programmed desorption, and precision 4-pt conductivity
• Ultrahigh vacuum system equipped to do high-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy

Selected Theses/Dissertations

• The HDS Reactivity of Defective MoS2 Single Crystal Surfaces, PhD dissertation, C. Wiegenstein, in progress, 1999.
• Hydrodesulfurization Surface Reactions on Carbided Mo(110) Surfaces, PhD dissertation, C. Roe, in progress, 1999.
• Micropatterning for Neural Confinement, MS thesis, K. Ho, in progress 1998.
• Fundamental Study of Carbon Dioxide Blasting: An Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Surface Cleaning, PhD dissertation, R. Miller, 1994.
• Effects of Physical Size Reduction of Coal in a Hydrogen Donor Solvent, MS thesis, F. Seefeldt, 1994.
• Silica Gel Materials as Catalyst Supports for Photocatalytic Destruction of Organic Water Pollutants, MS thesis, O. Egorova, 1993.