Argonne is home to a number of facilities and tools for catalysis research that are not readily available in academic or industrial laboratories.

Facilities

High Throughput Laboratory

• Uses: Screening and characterization 
• Parametric studies for understanding catalyst performance. Experiments are set up in parallel, allowing for increased experimental load without increasing costs or development time. The screening pressure reactor and parallel-plug flow reactor systems allow scientists to evaluate the performance of new homogeneous or heterogeneous catalyst formulations for either gas-liquid, liquid-liquid or gas-solid reactions over a wide range of temperatures, pressures and reactant compositions.

Materials Engineering Research Facility

• Uses: New materials and process scale-up
• Enables the development of manufacturing processes for producing catalyst materials in sufficient quantity for industrial testing

Advanced Photon Source

• Use: Characterization
• Allows for the observation of catalysts under actual reaction conditions
• Using a variety of X-ray techniques, each beam line is set up for simple experiments such as ​“ex situ” studies, which characterize a sample ​“as received” without any additional treatment, up to more complex ​“in situ” or ​“operando” studies, where the working catalyst is studied under actual reaction conditions. The scientists at the Advanced Photon Source have the experience and expertise to help you design the appropriate experiment to meet your scientific needs as well as to analyze and interpret the data.

Center for Nanoscale Materials

• Use: Characterization
• The Electron Microscopy Center has a variety of specialized equipment for imaging and analyzing catalysts at the nanoscale level, including an analytical transmission electron microscope, high-resolution, high-vacuum SEM and high-resolution environmental and variable-pressure SEM.

Argonne Leadership and Computing Center

• Use: Computational design
• esearchers can perform material screening and key parameter calculations on one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, Mira. Mira can perform 10 quadrillion calculations per second, and our visualization cluster helps transform computational data into high-resolution images, videos and animations, helping users better analyze and understand simulations produced by Mira.

Atomic Layer Deposition Laboratory

• Use: New materials synthesis
• Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a highly controlled method for depositing precise thin films to a desired thickness onto a substrate, enabling the ​“growth” of differing multilayer structures and improving catalyst stability while maintaining or improving catalyst performance.

In addition, three Argonne researchers – chemist Karena Chapman, materials scientist Olle Heinonen and materials scientist Alex Martinson – are designated as Principle Investigators at the Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center (ICDC) at the University of Minnesota. The ICDC is one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Frontier Research Centers.  

Equipment

The catalysis group is fully equipped to synthesize, characterize and investigate the reactivity of inorganic/organometallic complexes and materials, including those that are air- and moisture-sensitive.

Instruments and Analytical Capabilities:

• Bruker AVANCE III 500 (with Brucker autosampler) NMR Spectrometer
• Micromeritics ASAP 2020 for surface area and porosity measurements
• Altimira AMI-90 equipped with a mass spectrometer (MS) for dynamic chemisorption (e.g., temperature programmed desorption, temperature programmed reduction/oxidation)
• TA Instruments Discovery Thermogravimetric Analyzer (TGA) equipped with an MS
• Nicolet iS50 FT-IR Spectrometer equipped with a Harrick Praying Mantis Reaction Chamber for in situ measurements
• Bruker Alpha FTIR spectrometer (Bruker Optics, Billerica, Mass.) with a single-reflection diamond ATR setup
• Shimadzu UV-3600 Plus UV-VIS-NIR spectrometer equipped with a Harrick Praying Mantis Reaction Chamber for in situ measurements
• Bruker Diffractometer D8 Advance for Powder X-ray Diffraction (PXRD)

Synthetic Capabilities:

• Two vacuum atmospheres, four port OMNI-LAB gloveboxes and, two MBraun, four port MBRAUN LABmaster, 130 gloveboxes for synthesis and manipulation of air- and moisture-sensitive materials
• Vacuum Atmospheres Solvent Purification System
• Additionally, the catalysis lab is fully equipped with Schlenk lines, rotary evaporators, drying ovens and the full suite of standard synthetic tools and equipment