Due to the absence of clear guidelines in characterizing heterogeneous catalyst facets in structure-sensitive reactions, there's been massive confusion in determining particle facets. Consequently, extensive work (some published in top journals) was nearly wasted. Together with Prof. Michiel Dusselier, they developed this opinion after being invited by Guest Editor Dr. MARIAM AMEEN to contribute to the journal "Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry." They highlighted the confusion and supported them with real published examples, aiming to guide beginners in this field. The guideline paper under the title: “Guidelines toward reliable facets characterization for structure-sensitive reactions” for the researcher in this area as an opinion article in a reputable journal; namely: Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry, we Prof. Dusselier and the fellow wrote together.
The fellow have synthesized successfully different shapes of ZnZrOx catalyst; namely octahedral and cubic. The fellow has conducted extensive characterization on the developed catalyst. He could see clearly the successful formation of the catalyst particles with different morphology (cubic and octahedral). One of the shapes; namely cubic ZnZrOx, is missed from the library of this material and he could synthesis in Prof. Dusslier’s lab this novel shape which has not been reported in the literature. In order to get the cubic morphology, he had analyze critically the existed data in the literature. Conduct several experiment and optimize the structure. Finally he succeed in obtaining the cubic morphology of ZrO2 particles.
The developed catalyst is dynamic in nature where the catalytic activity is increasing over the time under reaction conditions. This allows the fellow, for the first time, to observe the formed active sites and correlate them to the produced products. Consequently, he can determine the active sites that are responsible for the formation of CO as it has been always overlooked in the literature.
