A powerful platform for engineering sustainability in catalytic and electrochemical energy conversion processes can be offered by atomically designed materials, in specific by single/dual atom catalysts [SAC]. Such materials are well known for maximized atomic utilization and precise control of active sites, which reduces the dependence on scarce or critical metals but still deliver with high activity, selectivity, and stability under operating conditions relevant to sustainable technologies. The focus of the symposium will be on the design, synthesis, and evaluation (using imaging and/or spectroscopic techniques) of SAC for catalytic and electrochemical applications, including electrocatalytic transformations. Strategies that link atomic-scale engineering to sustainability outcomes, such as earth-abundant metal systems, low-energy and scalable synthesis routes, stability under realistic electrochemical environments, and catalyst recyclability will be emphasized here. The emerging efforts to integrate life-cycle assessment, techno-economic analysis, and systems-level considerations into the development of SACs that bridges laboratory-scale advances with real-world deployment will also be highlighted in the symposium. This symposium will aim to define pathways for translating atomic precision into measurable and scalable sustainability impact, by bringing together researchers across catalysis, electrochemistry, and sustainable materials engineering
- In situ / operando studies to understand material behaviour in real-time operating conditions
- Study of synthesis mechanisms, material selectivity and stability
- In-depth investigations on metal support interactions
- Life cycle assessment and/or Lab-to-Fab realization
- New methodologies/strategies in single atom material synthesis
- Advances in characterization techniques to confirm presence of single atom materials
- Single atom catalysts in photocatalysis, photoelectrocatalysis, photothermal catalysis, CO2 reduction, energy storag
- DFT studies on single atom materials
- Machine learning approaches and accelerated single atom materials discovery
Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldán Cuenya is currently the director of the Interface Science Department as well as interims director of Inorganic Chemistry Department at the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin (Germany). She began her academic career by completing her MSc in Physics in Spain in 1998 and a PhD in Physics in Germany in 2001. Her postdoctoral research took her to the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara (USA). In 2004 she joined the Department of Physics at the University of Central Florida as Assistant Professor becoming a full professor in 2012. In 2013, she moved back to Germany and became a Chair professor of Solid State Physics at the Ruhr-University Bochum. She then joined the FHI in 2017.
Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldan Cuenya is the author of 245 peer-reviewed publications, 6 book chapters and 6 patents. She has been supervising 74 postdoctoral fellows and 36 PhD students. She serves in the editorial board of the Journal of Catalysis and the Chemical Reviews journal. She is a member of the Academia Europaea as well as of the Germany National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Recently she received the Manchot Research Professorship from TU Munich (2023), the 2022 Paul H. Emmet Award of the North American Catalysis Society, the Röntgen Medal (2022), the Faraday Medal from The Electrochemistry Division of the UK Royal Society of Chemistry (2022), the AVS Fellow Award (2021) and the International Society of Electrochemistry-Elsevier Prize for Experimental Electrochemistry (2021).