University of Minnesota chemical engineering researchers have come up with something clever – a way to replace expensive catalyzing metals with cheaper metals:
A team of energy researchers led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have invented a groundbreaking device that electronically converts one metal into behaving like another to use as a catalyst for speeding chemical reactions. The fabricated device, called a “catalytic condenser,” is the first to demonstrate that alternative materials that are electronically modified to provide new properties can yield faster, more efficient chemical processing. …
The catalytic condenser device uses a combination of nanometer films to move and stabilize electrons at the surface of the catalyst. This design has the unique mechanism of combining metals and metal oxides with graphene to enable fast electron flow with surfaces that are tunable for chemistry.
“Using various thin film technologies, we combined a nano-scale film of alumina made from low-cost abundant aluminum metal with graphene, which we were then able to tune to take on the properties of other materials,” said Tzia Ming Onn, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota who fabricated and tested the catalytic condensers. “The substantial ability to tune the catalytic and electronic properties of the catalyst exceeded our expectations.”
It seems to be a programmable device to make one metal look like another, rather like Field Programmable Gate Arrays can be used to simulate a CPU or other device. OK, that’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s still cool.
Unless you’re a catalytic converter thief. But with electric vehicles being the future, they already knew their future is limited.
