Watching Chemical Breakdown Atom by Atom

Duke researchers captured how a catalyst degrades to better understand how to build more sustainable chemistry

Man in grey hoodie looks into an advanced microscope with green glow coming out of it.

The following is a summary of a story that originally appeared on the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences website.

Catalysts, materials that help chemicals react faster and more efficiently, are an important player in the shift to a cleaner future. Catalysts that break apart water into hydrogen and oxygen are used for green energy generation and to reduce the energy required for chemical manufacturing.

One of the most important catalysts of this type is iridium oxide, which is based on one of the rarest elements found on Earth. Over time, the catalyst breaks down – and understanding how it does can point toward better, more stable formulations.

A new federally funded study by researchers at Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania offers an unprecedented view of this breakdown: atom by atom.

“The ability to watch these materials fall apart at the scale of atoms and in real time is an extremely exciting development,” said S. Avery Vigil, graduate student at Duke and first-author of the article. “We are learning so much about how catalysts behave during operation.”

What they saw using advanced electron microscopes challenges the idea that catalyst degradation is a simple, uniform process. Instead, the breakdown occurred irregularly and produced jagged surfaces. More strikingly, different facets of the same particle could undergo different types of changes at the same time, like an ice block being picked on one side and melted on the other.

Addressing these structural changes could lead to better catalysts with a big impact, and it all started with looking at what is happening at the tiniest scale.

“If you had told me when I was a kid that one day we would be able to film atoms, I would have thought that it was science fiction,” said Ivan A. Moreno-Hernandez, assistant professor of chemistry at Duke and senior author of the paper. “Now it's a reality.”

To learn more about this research, visit the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences website.