May 23 2008
If you bond nanofibers to solid foam, you get ‘hairy foam’. Doctoral candidate Patrick Wenmakers from Eindhoven University of Technology has developed this product, which provides an excellent basic structure for catalytic systems. This week, his research is on the cover of the Journal of Materials Chemistry, a top journal in its field.
A catalyst is a material that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself being consumed in it. For the greatest possible effect, the surface area of the catalyst must be as large as possible. Wenmakers’ research, supervised by prof. Jaap Schouten, aims at producing a carrier structure to which the actual catalyst particles are attached. This basic structure must be sturdy, easy to produce and relatively inert to other materials. And of course it must offer the largest possible contact surface area.
By bonding carbon nanofibers to carbon foam, Wenmakers has been able to produce a structure with a surface area around a thousand times greater than that of the original foam. This makes the ‘hairy foam’ an excellent basic structure for catalytic systems. It also has a second advantage: the structure is very open, allowing substances to pass through it easily. This reduces the chance of undesired by-products to a minimum, because no passing chemicals can become ‘stuck’ in it and cause undesired reactions.
Wenmakers expects to gain his PhD in one-and-a-half years with this research, which is being paid for by Technology Foundation STW and a number of companies. He can’t yet say how soon those companies will start to use his product. However he emphasizes that it is suitable for ‘large numbers of different reactions’. “And also for waste water purification, for example.”
An interesting detail: the artist’s impression on the cover of the scientific journal was made by Wenmakers himself. “The journal asked us if we could provide an illustration for the cover, because of the quality of the article. But we only had ten days in which to do it. So I quickly did it myself, using a 3D drawing program.”