Recently, the whole team went to ELLETRA synchrotron in Trieste, Italy, for operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy measurements of self-heating catalysts. We had a whole six days and nights of work, fun, excitement and some broken capillaries. Noelia Barrabes, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster and two students of her team, Adea Loxha and Sebastian Mößlacher, helped us to fulfill our ambitious work plan to the end, thanks! Very special thanks also for Giovanni Agostini from ELLETRA, who showed us the ropes with the spectra acquisition and supported us even in unreasonable hours. Of course, we capitalized on being at the Italian seafront, so it was seafood restaurants almost every day of the trip. Except for a pile of cevapcici when driving through Slovenia.

We welcome our new additions to the team, Master students Elif  and Alois! Elif will do her Master thesis on the topic of converting alcohols to jet fuel range hydrocarbons, and Alois will work on new catalysts for induction heating. To exciting and fruitful six months!

Our new Perspective article is published in Chem Catalysis! We examine transition metal ions hosted in zeolites for catalytic applications, dive into under-discussed effects on their speciation, and look for future research directions. Thanks to the TU Wien Bibliothek for enabling us to publish open access! www.cell.com/chem-catalysis/fulltext/S2667-1093(24)00317-8, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster

Last week, Nicole and Stelios presented their work at the Österreichische Chemietage at the TU Graz. Stelios gave an interesting talk about self-heating iron-based catalysts for CO2 conversion to valuable chemicals, and Nicole presented a poster on her recent research on conversion of bio-derived alcohols to fuels. It was a nice gathering with many topics covered, and a good opportunity to explain our research to the Chemistry community in Austria.

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We published a new paper highlighting the interesting activity of cobalt ions in ZSM-5 zeolites: Cobalt ions positioned at channel intersections in proximity to zeolite Bronsted acid sites activate methane facilitating its reaction with benzene to toluene. A nice addition for the utilization of methane! Thanks to our collaborators at TU München and TotalEnergies, and to the TU Wien Bibliothek for providing us with the opportunity to publish open access. You can read the paper here. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcat.2024.115686, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster

Last week Maricruz attended the 9^th EuChemS in Dublin, where she was invited to give a talk about Multifunctional materials for thermocatalytic CO₂ conversion. She introduced our recent advances on Stelios’ self-heating catalysts to a broad chemistry audience. It was a nice conference, with a large representation from TU Wien, and a bit of a cool break from the hot Vienna summer!

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Part of our team participated in the Frauenlauf (Women’s Run), which was held in Vienna’s iconic Prater park. Maricruz celebrated her 10 km run as part of the FemChem, öffnet eine externe URL team together with Frieda Kapsamer and Katharina Ehrmann, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster, and Nicole together with friends. Congrats!

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We successfully completed four rather exhausting days at the ALBA Synchrotron near Barcelona, collecting operando spectroscopy at the NOTOS beamline. Stelios seems to be quite happy with the exciting data from in-situ X-ray absorption and X-ray diffraction obtained for his Fe-based catalysts, but now he has to put in many more days into data analysis. Many thanks to Noelia Barrabes (head of the ClusCAT team) for guiding us and taking the night shifts together with Stelios, while Maricruz and Christian oversaw day shifts. Special thanks for Carlo Marini from ALBA for his extraordinary assistance with the experiments! After four days of hard work, we went for a Calçotada, a traditional Catalan dish involving grilled green onions being dunked in Romesco sauce (but NOT in Aioli, that is where Catalan people draw the line, apparently!) and eating it in a very peculiar position.

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Maricruz Sanchez-Sanchez, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster, Mireia, Stelios, and Christian, had the opportunity to attend to the XVth Europacat conference in Prague. This bi-yearly conference unites researchers working with catalysis around Europe and the world, presenting their newest research in catalyst design and characterization, CO2 valorization, biomass utilization, electrocatalysis, and many more. Mireia Palma Cazorla, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster, Stylianos Spyroglou, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster, and Christian Schröder,, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster all presented posters of their work on Monday’s poster session, which resulted in many discussions and new impulses for future investigations.

In total, there were more than 1800 participants, within them a good representation of TU Wien current and formerly affiliated researchers: the TUCAS group led by Christoph Rameshan,, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster (now Montanuniversität Leoben), Karin Foettinger, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster’s Technical Catalysis group, the ClusCAT Lab nanocluster catalysis research group , öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fensterby Noelia Barrabés Rabanal, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster, and Irina Delidovich, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster’s group. It was also great to enjoy some time together, seeing sights like the castle or the Charles bridge, and enjoying Prague via its beverages and food. In the end, it was a wonderful trip for all of us, and we are looking forward to the next Europacat in Trondheim in 2025. Na zdravi!

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Happy to see this work published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster, it has been a long journey! In collaboration with the groups of Evgeny Pidko, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster and Johannes Lercher, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster, we studied the structure of nanoscopic copper oxide clusters, hosted in zeolites, that are able to selectively convert methane into methanol. We obtained a quantitative description of the types of active metal-oxo clusters hosted in the microporous channels of highly active Cu-mordenite (CuMOR) materials. Theoretical assessment of the most stable structures, together with spectroscopic characterization, allowed the description at molecular level of two types of active clusters present in CuMOR materials, namely a monometallic Cu-oxo and a bimetallic Cu-(Al)-oxo cluster formed via reaction of exchanged Cu with extraframework Al.
This work shows how important is, for the activity of metal exchanged zeolite catalysts, the competition between different metal-oxo cationic structures, stoichiometries and locations within the framework. It also sheds light on the importance of reacting defects and extraframework Al species in zeolites. The results here will aid the synthesis of novel zeolite-based catalysts hosting metal-oxo ensembles with exceptional catalytic properties

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Our post-doc Christian, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster was given the prestigious “Best PhD Prize” at the 9th Conference of the Federation of European Zeolite Associations (FEZA) held in Portorož, Slovenia, from 3rd to 6th of July. The award is granted every three years for excellent publications, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster arising from PhD projects in the field of zeolite and porous material sciences, which Christian has written during and after his PhD stay at the University of Münster, Germany, under supervision of Hubert Koller , öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fensterand Michael Hansen, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster. His work involves the investigation of catalytic sites in zeolites, specifically Brønsted acid sites and silanol defects, by using solid-state NMR techniques to uncover internal hydrogen bond interactions and therefore important structural and catalytic properties. As per custom at FEZA conferences, Christian was invited to give the very last talk about his research. He also contributed a well-received poster contribution from research of our group: The combination of metal oxides and zeolites to create tandem bifunctional catalysts for CO₂/CO hydrogenation reactions to olefins. Congratulations!

News at the FEZA homepage, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster

© Mojca Opresnik/FEZA

FEZA PhD prize

Joint Team Building with Noelia Barrabes, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster and her group: We had a blast in the Heurigen, drinking white wine, eating treats, and enjoying the view over Vienna. Which was bitterly needed after taking the alleged shorter route uphill through the vineyards, though the weather was perfect for this trip. A Must-Do for the Viennese in summer!

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ALBA, round two: This time, Stelios and Nicole, together with Noelia Barrabés and her group, went to do some exciting (and exhausting) experiments at the ALBA synchrotron facility in Barcelona. So now there are a lot of EXAFS data to be analyzed back in Vienna.They also had a lot of fun eating calçots (Catalonian spring onions) like real Catalans.

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A whooping four new members joined the team in the span of two weeks: Nicole Müller is our newest PhD student and the first Austrian native on our floor. She will be doing research on transition metal-exchanged zeolites. José (from France) and Lilla (from Slovakia) are our new interns supervised by Christian and Stelios, respectively. Niko (from Austria) will be the first one to write a bachelor thesis under the supervision of Mireia. Welcome aboard!

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The 34. Deutsche Zeolith-Tagung was held at the University of Vienna, so Maricruz and Christian attended to present their zeolite research (go figure!). Maricruz's invited plenary lecture about single-site transition metal catalysts hosted by zeolites was certainly one highlight of the conference. Christian presented recent research on the activity of tandem metal-oxide/zeolite catalysts as a poster, and, on the side, gave a talk about his core PhD results. With lots of discussions with all kinds of people in the porous materials community. Exciting stuff!

Mireia and Maricruz assisted Noelia Barrabés' group and co-authored a new publication: "Structural evolution after oxidative pretreatment and CO oxidation of Au nanoclusters with different ligand shell composition: a view on the Au core", presenting results from the ALBA synchrotron last year. The article is published in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster. Congratulations to everyone involved!