Equipment: MRI: Track 1 Acquisition of a Near Ambient Pressure X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (NAP-XPS) System for Research and Teaching at the University of South Carolina

About This Grant

About a third of the world’s gross domestic product passes through a catalytic reactor at some point. This includes textiles, petroleum products, fertilizer, specialty chemicals, pesticides, fragrances, and pharmaceuticals. Manufacturing these products often involves catalysts composed of metal nanoparticles containing platinum or palladium. The nanoparticles are anchored to a stable porous support, such as aluminum oxide or carbon. The materials must be accurately characterized, and the nanoparticle chemical composition and structure must be known. Characterization at the nanoparticle surface is most important because reactions take place there. Ideally, catalysts should be studied under reaction conditions at elevated temperatures. This Major Research Instrumentation award will support the acquisition of a Near Ambient Pressure X-ray Photoelectron Spectrometer (NAP-XPS) at the University of South Carolina. It will be used to study nanoparticle surfaces under reaction conditions. The new instrument will enable state-of-the-art development of new catalyst systems for myriad advanced manufacturing processes that rely on catalytic reactions. Research that will be enabled with the NAP-XPS includes studies of the active site for hydrogenation and hydroformylation over Cu-based metal-organic frameworks, upgrading of waste biomass, transition and reducible metal catalysis, and supported bimetallic catalysts in hydrogenation reactions. Other materials science research projects involve dynamic processes occurring on novel materials, such as crystalline macrocycles, quantum dots, and spongy multi-metallic nanoparticles. The impact of the NAP-XPS instrument will reach far beyond the university's campus and will support academic and industrial research and education in the southeast region of the U.S., where it will be the only such instrument. At present fifteen universities and six private companies, mainly in the southeast, are external users of the XPS facility. The instrument will be heavily utilized in the University of South Carolina's NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center, the Center for Rational Catalyst Synthesis. Educational outreach includes programs for students at undergraduate and graduate levels. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.