Libraries Design and Synthesis of High Surface Area Materials at IMP

摘要

The Combinatorial methods are potential tools for high throughput preparation of catalytic materials and the subsecuent screening of their catalytic properties (1). These methods allow the rapid and accurate synthesis of complete series of libraries having several compositional variables and diverse surface properties, which are induced by a variety of thermochemical treatments. In the present work, the combinatorial methods were used for synthesizing extended series of catalytic materials by means of the proper design of libraries and the rapid deposition of basic reagents, using a robotic module, which led to the high throughput synthesis of new materials. This approach makes possible the testing of hundreds of samples for designing new catalytic materials with potential properties as catalysts and adsorbents (2). In the present work, mesoporous materials consisting of silicoaluminates having textural properties useful for catalysis, i.e high surface and high pore volume, were prepared by the combinatorial methods. Subsequently, their surface properties were characterized by means of IR spectroscopy of ad- sorbed pyridine and their catalytic properties were characterized by means of the 2-propanol conversion, using the Multi-Fixed-Bed-Reactor system from Symyx Inc., which allowed the parallel screeening of 48 (i.e. 6 x 8 library) samples at a time, under the same conditions. The present study demonstrates that the rapid synthesis and screening of 48 sample libraries of catalytic materials on a one day basis is possible, giving the opportunity to build up robust databases for further development of heterogeneous catalysts and adsorbent materials. In the present case the series of mesopor- ous silicolauminates (3) was chosen for showing the capabilities and poten- tial use of the combinatorial techniques at IMP for heterogeneous catalyst design.