Missile system checks catalysts
12 Jun 2000
Technology that, until recently, guided heat-seeking missiles to their targets is now being used to perfect catalysts for industrial processes and pollution control. The research, directed by Jochen Lauterbach at Purdue University in Indiana, promises fast screening of thousands of catalyst candidates for both gas-phase and solid/liquid reactions.
The system uses combinatorial chemistry techniques, which have been used for some years in drug discovery research. It involves using an array of potential catalysts, each coated onto a microscopic plastic bead, to run the same reaction simultaneously. Checking which molecules have adsorbed onto the surface of each bead gives researchers information about reaction mechanisms, and pinpoints which catalysts are the best candidates for scale-up into industrial process.
Although the automated system runs thousands of reactions simultaneously, the analysis part of the experiment is still laborious, with every sample having to be studied individually. Lauterbach's team has been tackling this problem, using an infra-red detector only recently declassified from military research to build a spectrometer which is almost 2000 times faster than conventional screening techniques.
Dubbed a `rapid-scan Fourier transform infra-red imaging system', the Purdue team's device combines the ex-military detector with a series of infra-red lenses configured to give an unusually large field of view. This can scan hundreds of catalysts simultaneously in around 15 seconds, claims Lauterbach.
Other advantages of the system include greater sensitivity than conventional IR spectrometers, so it gives more information on reaction mechanisms and dynamics. Moreover, it does not destroy the samples it studies, so promising candidates can be subjected to further study, such as mass spectroscopy or NMR techniques. `With this information, we can create a database which we can use for the actual design of new catalysts,' Lauterbach says.
Copyright: Centaur Communications Ltd and licensors
