To describe the context of the NACAREI project, I invoke the vision of so-called “single particle catalysis science”, which is the ability to directly correlate the activity of a single nanoparticle in the sub-10 nm size range with said nanoparticles’ surface state, structure, composition and size at operando conditions, that is, when the catalyst particle is at work at technologically relevant reaction conditions in terms of pressure, temperature and reactant concentration. This vision is driven by the prospect of unprecedented fundamental insights beyond the current research frontier in the field of heterogeneous catalysis. Such insights will provide design rules for superior catalyst materials critically needed to address some of humanity’s grand challenges and the UN goals for sustainable development in the energy, environmental clean-up and drug-development areas, for all of which catalysis is a key technology. However, at the start of the NACAREI project, such experiments and the corresponding ultimate level of insight remain unrealized, despite significant advances in the field, mainly due to the lack of experimental methods that would enable such experiments.
To fill this gap, it is the main goal of the NACAREI project to establish a novel optical nano-imaging and nano-spectroscopy experimental platform termed “Nanofluidic Catalytic Reaction Imaging” (NCRI) that for the first time will achieve a holy grail of heterogeneous catalysis by correlating – 1:1 – the activity of a single nanoparticle with its composition, structure, size, shape and support material down to sub-10 nm particles on which industrially relevant catalysis occurs.
The anticipated direct impact of NACAREI is two-fold: (i) it will provide the scientific community a novel experimental microscopy/spectroscopy platform to study catalytic reactions on single nanoparticles; (ii) it will deliver new and non-ensemble-averaged insights about the impact of widely used surfactant molecules, of catalyst nanoparticle structure/composition, and of catalyst nanoparticle support materials, on catalytic processes, to provide fundamental understanding necessary for the design of better catalyst materials.
In the more long-term, I expect impact beyond the realm of catalysis science since the developed new microscopy/spectroscopy platform also can be applied to other nanoscopic systems than catalyst nanoparticles, such as for example biological nanoparticles like lipids, extracellular vesicles or viruses and thus become of high relevance as label-free imaging/microscopy technique in the life sciences.
