Barbara A. J. Lechner
Functional Nanomaterials in Catalysis
The research group of Barbara Lechner investigates the dynamic restructuring of functional nanomaterials under realistic conditions, e.g. model catalysts under a reactive gas atmosphere. To this purpose, they place a scanning tunneling microscope with high temporal and spatial resolution directly into gas mixtures and thus investigate how the structure of nanoparticles (metal clusters) and oxide supports changes under these conditions. By using small clusters with a precisely defined number of atoms, it is possible to investigate how the formation and decay of highly reactive particle structures occurs, can be controlled and how such structural changes influence the activity of a catalyst.
Key publications:
Cluster Catalysis with Lattice Oxygen: Tracing Oxygen Transport from a Magnetite (001) Support onto Small Pt Clusters, S. Kaiser, F. Maleki, K. Zhang, W. Harbich, U. Heiz, S. Tosoni, B. A. J. Lechner,* G. Pacchioni, F. Esch, ACS Catal. 2021, 11, 9519–9529.
Influence of local defects on the dynamics of O-H bond breaking and formation on a magnetite surface, A. Bourgund, B. A. J. Lechner,* M. Meier, C. Franchini, G. S. Parkinson, U. Heiz, F. Esch, J. Phys. Chem. C 2019, 123, 19742–19747.
A microscopy approach to investigating the energetics of small supported metal clusters, B. A. J. Lechner, F. Knoller, A. Bourgund, U. Heiz, F. Esch,* J. Phys. Chem. C 2018, 122, 22569–22576.