PhD defense of Charlotte Vogt

On April 18, Charlotte Vogt has  successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled ‘Structure Sensitivity in Catalysis’. She has been awarded her doctoral degree with cum laude honors. Congratulations on this great achievement!

Structure Sensitivity in Catalysis

Supported metal catalysts play a major role in the chemical industry and are essential to enable processes that will fuel the future, such as the production of fuels from carbon dioxide. When we make the metal nanoparticles that comprise the active part of these supported metal catalysts smaller and smaller, they start to show very different properties to what we expect and understand from classical physics and chemistry.

In my PhD research work I tried to uncover the fundamental mechanisms behind these phenomena in the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide (CO2) into methane (CH4), and other structure-(in)sensitive catalytic reactions. I did this in order to steer towards better, more efficient catalysts for different hydrogenation reactions, but also to gain a better understanding of what concepts we can best apply to mitigate the harmful effects of carbon dioxide pollution on our environment.

Source: website Utrecht University