Publications related to Geometry as a Catalyst: How Vapor Cavities Nucleate from Defects

Vapor compression and energy dissipation in a collapsing laser-induced bubble

Mohamed Farhat, Danail Obreschkow, Armand Baptiste Sieber, Davide Bernardo Preso

The composition of the gaseous phase of cavitation bubbles and its role on the collapse remains to date poorly understood. In this work, experiments of single cavitation bubbles in aqueous ammonia serve as a novel approach to investigate the effect of the ...

Aip Publishing2024

Engineering Frustrated Lewis Pair Active Sites in Porous Organic Scaffolds for Catalytic CO2 Hydrogenation

Anne-Clémence Corminboeuf, Jacob Terence Blaskovits, Shubhajit Das, Rubén Laplaza Solanas

Frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs), featuring reactive combinations of Lewis acids and Lewis bases, have been utilized for myriad metal-free homogeneous catalytic processes. Immobilizing the active Lewis sites to a solid support, especially to porous scaffolds, ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

Chalcogen bonding catalysis

Jieping Zhu

Catalysts play a major role in chemical synthesis, and catalysis is considered to be a green and economic process. Catalysis is dominated by covalent interactions between the catalyst and substrate. The design of non-covalent catalysts came into limelight ...

Royal Society of Chemistry2024

The influence of the gas on the dynamics of cavitation bubbles

Davide Bernardo Preso

Cavitation bubbles, extensively investigated in fluid mechanics, present enduring challenges in hydraulic machinery, while holding considerable potential for practical applications in biomedicine and sonochemistry. Despite more than a century of research, ...

EPFL2023

Deposition freezing, pore condensation freezing and adsorption: three processes, one description?

Mária Lbadaoui-Darvas, Athanasios Nenes

Heterogeneous ice nucleation impacts the hydrological cycle and climate through affecting cloud microphysical state and radiative properties. Despite decades of research, a quantitative description and understanding of heterogeneous ice nucleation remains ...

Copernicus GmbH2023

Pathways to enhance electrochemical CO2 reduction identified through direct pore-level modeling

Sophia Haussener, Shuo Liu, Etienne Boutin, Evan Fair Johnson

Electrochemical conversion of CO2 to fuels and valuable products is one pathway to reduce CO2 emissions. Electrolyzers using gas diffusion electrodes (GDEs) show much higher current densities than aqueous phase electrolyzers, yet models for multi-physical ...

2023

Modeling the origins of adhesive wear across scales

Son-Jonathan Pham-Ba

Friction and wear occur at every interface between solid materials. In the design of mechanical devices, it is desirable to be able to quantify and control the amount of friction and wear, as well as predict their evolution with time. ``Tribology'' is the ...

EPFL2022

Molecular dynamics simulations of the evaporation of hydrated ions from aqueous solution

Philip Robin Loche

Although important for atmospheric processes and gas-phase catalysis, very little is known about the hydration state of ions in the vapor phase. Here we study the evaporation energetics and kinetics of a chloride ion from liquid water by molecular dynamics ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022

Microfluidic study in a meter-long reactive path reveals how the medium’s structural heterogeneity shapes MICP-induced biocementation

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis, Ariadni Elmaloglou

Microbially induced calcium carbonate (CaCO3) precipitation (MICP) is one of the major sustainable alternatives to the artificial cementation of granular media. MICP consists of injecting the soil with bacterial- and calcium-rich solutions sequentially to ...

Nature Research2022

Strategic factors to design the next generation of molecular water oxidation catalysts: Lesson learned from ruthenium complexes

Mohammad Khaja Nazeeruddin

Energy conversion through sustainable means is essential to counter global warming and an urgent solution through a multidisciplinary approach is required. The temperature change stems from the emission of greenhouse gases largely contributed by burning fo ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2022

A mixture model to take into account diluted gas in liquid flow: applications to aluminium electrolysis

Emile Tryphon Pierre Soutter

Aluminium is a metal sought in the industry because of its various physical properties. It is produced by an electrolysis reduction process in large cells. In these cells, a large electric current goes through the electrolytic bath and the liquid aluminium ...

EPFL2022

Understanding the mechanisms of adhesive wear for heterogeneous materials through atomistic simulations

Jean-François Molinari, Sacha Zenon Wattel, Antonio Joaquin Garcia Suarez

When two rough surfaces slide against each other, two main behaviors can be observed at the asperity level: A ductile behavior where the asperities tend to smooth out or a brittle behavior where the asperities detach and form debris. Recently, a critical l ...

2022

Rh-catalyzed C-H Bond Heteroarylation with Hypervalent Iodine Reagents and Pd-Catalyzed Tethered Functionalizations of Carbon-Carbon Multiple Bonds

Ashis Kumar Das

Transition metal-catalyzed C-H activation is a powerful tool for the synthesis of organic building blocks, materials, and natural products. Over the last decade, directing-group-assisted metal-catalyzed C-H functionalization has attracted increasing intere ...

EPFL2022

Aging of industrial Fe-zeolite based catalysts for nitrous oxide abatement in nitric acid production plants

Oliver Kröcher, Davide Ferri, Filippo Buttignol, Pierdomenico Biasi

The influence of hydrothermal aging on the structural and catalytic properties of two commercial Fe-exchanged zeolite catalysts (Fe-FER and Fe-ZSM-5) in the extruded form employed for the removal of N2O from the exhaust of nitric acid production plants has ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2022

Thermal Modelling and Experimental Validation in the Perspective of Tool Steel Laser Polishing

Alexandre Masserey, Eric Boillat, Bastian Meylan

Laser polishing (LP) is a process that allows a significant reduction of the surface roughness of a metal workpiece via re-melting a shallow layer of material. However, the practical use of LP is limited due to the difficulty of satisfying the high surface ...

MDPI2022

Onset of sliding across scales: How the contact topography impacts frictional strength

Jean-François Molinari, Fabian Barras, Ramin Aghababaei

When two solids start rubbing together, frictional sliding initiates in the wake of slip fronts propagating along their surfaces in contact. This macroscopic rupture dynamics can be successfully mapped on the elastodynamics of a moving shear crack. However ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2021

Focusing on the liquid role in the vapour liquid solid growth mechanism

Lea Ghisalberti

In this work we dive into key questions regarding the wetting of a nanoscale droplet which provides fundamental understanding of Vapor-Liquid-Solid growth mode of nanowires. This understanding is important to performreproducible NW fabrication and allow th ...

EPFL2021

Reduction of PdO/Al2O3 in Liquid Cyclohexane Followed In Situ by ATR-IR, High-Energy XRD, and XAS

Thibault Xavier Florian Fovanna, Oliver Kröcher, Davide Ferri

Supported Pd-based catalysts used in heterogeneously catalyzed liquid phase processes often undergo an activation step through reduction of the oxide phase or of the oxidic passivation layer prior to reaction. An oxidized Pd/Al2O3 catalyst was reduced by u ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2021

Adhesive wear regimes on rough surfaces and interaction of micro-contacts

Jean-François Molinari, Son-Jonathan Pham-Ba

We develop an analytical model of adhesive wear between two unlubricated rough surfaces, forming micro-contacts under normal load. The model is based on an energy balance and a crack initiation criteria. We apply the model to the problem of self-affine rou ...

2021

Atomic Level Insights of Non-Noble Metal Catalysts for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction

Lichen Bai

The conversion of intermittent renewable energy resources in the form of chemical bond, such as hydrogen production from electrochemical water splitting, is a promising way to satisfy the future global energy demand and address the environmental issues. Th ...

EPFL2021