Matthew M. Montemore

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at Tulane University

A key issue in catalyst design is understanding how adsorption energies of surface intermediates vary across both different surfaces and various types of adsorbing atoms. In this work, we examine trends in adsorption energies of a wide variety of adsorbates that attach to transition metal surfaces through different atoms (H, C, N, O, F, S, etc.). A...

Adsorption energies have significant value as predictors of catalytic performance. An important method of increasing efficiency of adsorption energy calculations is to employ scaling relations, which are linear relationships between adsorption energies of similar adsorbates. They are most commonly used to unify the description of adsorbates that bi...

Understanding which surface properties control adsorption on metal surfaces has long been a primary goal in surface science and catalysis, for both fundamental and technological reasons. Moreover, for the purposes of designing catalysts for enhanced selectivity, it can be desirable to understand surface properties that lead to significant differenc...

Abstract The oxidation of ethylene glycol (HOCH2CH2OH) and 1,2-propanediol (HOCH(CH3)CH2OH) was investigated over Pd/C, Au/C, and a series of bimetallic catalysts prepared by electroless deposition of Au onto Pd/C. In order to explain the enhanced activity of the bimetallic catalysts, the oxidation kinetics of selectively deuterated reagents were i...

Screening a large number of surfaces for their catalytic performance remains a challenge, leading to the need for simple models to predict adsorption properties. To facilitate rapid prediction of hydrocarbon adsorption energies, scaling relations that allow for calculation of the adsorption energy of any intermediate attached to any symmetric site...

Plasmonic “antenna reactor” alloys, consisting of a plasmonic material doped with a catalytically active metal, show great promise for efficient photocatalysis. However, while simple, intuitive, and approximate design principles such as the Sabatier principle have been developed for thermal and electrocatalysis, similar design principles for plasmo...

Over the last 80 years, chlorine (Cl) has been the primary promoter of the ethylene epoxidation reaction valued at ~40 billion USD per year, providing a ~25% selectivity increase over unpromoted silver (Ag) (~55%). Promoters such as cesium, rhenium, and molybdenum each add a few percent of selectivity enhancements to achieve 90% overall, but their...

Herein, we report the synthesis of two-dimensional Ta2Se2C (2D-Ta2Se2C) nanosheets using electrochemical lithiation in multilayer Ta2Se2C followed by sonication in deionized water. Multilayer Ta2Se2C was obtained via solid-state synthesis of FexTa2Se2C followed by chemical etching of Fe. 2D-Ta2Se2C exhibited promising electrocatalytic activity for...

Despite the broad catalytic relevance of metal–support interfaces, controlling their chemical nature, the interfacial contact perimeter (exposed to reactants), and consequently, their contributions to overall catalytic reactivity, remains challenging, as the nanoparticle and support characteristics are interdependent when catalysts are prepared by...

Ethylene oxide (EO) is a vital compound used as an intermediate in the production of other important compounds, such as ethylene glycol and glycol ether. EO is produced by selective...

Computation has long proven useful in understanding heterogeneous catalysts and rationalizing experimental findings. However, computational design with experimental validation requires somewhat different approaches and has proven more difficult. In recent years, there have been increasing successes in such computational design with experimental val...

Improving control over active‐site reactivity is a grand challenge in catalysis. Single‐atom alloys (SAAs) consisting of a reactive component doped as single atoms into a more inert host metal feature localized and well‐defined active sites, but fine tuning their properties is challenging. Here, a framework is developed for tuning single‐atom site...

Benzene, a high-volume chemical, is produced from larger molecules by inefficient and environmentally harmful processes. Recent changes in hydrocarbon feedstocks from oil to gas motivate research into small molecule upgrading. For example, the cyclotrimerization of acetylene reaction has been demonstrated on Pd, Pd alloy, and Cu surfaces and cataly...

Machine learning has been successfully applied in recent years to screen materials for a variety of applications. However, despite recent advances, most screening-based machine learning approaches are limited in generality and transferability, requiring new models to be created from scratch for each new application. This is particularly apparent in...

The catalytic performance of supported metals is greatly influenced by the interaction with the support material. The role of the support becomes even more important when dealing with metal nanoparticles and high reaction temperatures. Herein, we show that interfacial sites between two metal oxides, MgAlOx and ZrO2 can bestow high stability as well...

Plasmonic catalysis provides a possible means for driving chemical reactions under relatively mild conditions. Rational design of these systems is impeded by the difficulty in understanding the electron dynamics and their interplay with reactions. Real-time, time-dependent density functional theory (RT-TDDFT) can provide dynamic information on exci...

Lithium‐ion and sodium‐ion batteries (LIBs and SIBs) are crucial in our shift toward sustainable technologies. In this work, the potential of layered boride materials (MoAlB and Mo2AlB2) as novel, high‐performance electrode materials for LIBs and SIBs, is explored. It is discovered that Mo2AlB2 shows a higher specific capacity than MoAlB when used...

Heavy metal pollution is a key environmental problem. Selectively extracting heavy metals could accomplish water purification and resource recycling simultaneously. Adsorption is a promising approach with a facile process, adaptability for the broad concentration of feed water, and high selectivity. However, the adsorption method faces challenges i...

Single-atom catalysts have received significant attention for their ability to enable highly selective reactions. However, many reactions require more than one adjacent site to align reactants or break specific bonds. For example, breaking a C-O or O-H bond may be facilitated by a dual site containing an oxophilic element and a carbophilic or "hydr...

We leveraged Bayesian optimization (BO) to search for potential high-performing catalysts. Our BO workflow can be initialized with as few as 2 to 8 data points, and often identifies the optimal single-atom alloy surface in just a few iterations.

Single-atom alloys (SAAs) have drawn significant attention in recent years due to their excellent catalytic properties. Controlling the geometry and electronic structure of this type of localized catalytic active site is of fundamental and technological importance. Dual-atom alloys (DAAs) consisting of a heterometallic dimer embedded in the surface...

A catalytic surface should be stable under reaction conditions to be effective. However, it takes significant effort to calculate the stability of a surface, as this requires intensive quantum chemical calculations. To more efficiently estimate stability, we provide a general and data-efficient machine learning (ML) approach to accurately and effic...

This volume looks at modern approaches to catalysis and reviews the extensive literature. Chapters highlight microkinetic modeling, encapsulated metals for confined catalysis, recent advances on the direct decomposition of NOx and heteropolyacid catalysts. There is also a chapter reviewing methods for estimating adsorption energies on catalytic sur...

Machine learning (ML) promises to increase the efficiency of screening a large number of materials for catalytic reactions. However, most existing ML models can only be applied to a specific reaction; therefore, new models usually have to be built from scratch for a new application. The effort and expense needed to create large datasets is also a m...

The development of new catalyst materials for energy-efficient chemical synthesis is critical as over 80% of industrial processes rely on catalysts, with many of the most energy-intensive processes specifically using heterogeneous catalysis. Catalytic performance is a complex interplay of phenomena involving temperature, pressure, gas composition,...

Researchers often need to gather a comprehensive set of papers relevant to a focused topic, but this is often difficult and time-consuming using existing search methods. For example, keyword searching suffers from difficulties with synonyms and multiple meanings. While some automated research-paper recommender systems exist, these typically depend...

The strength of interaction between a metal and oxygen and/or carbon is a crucial factor for catalytic performance, materials stability, and other important applications. While these are fundamental properties in...

The strength of interaction between a metal and oxygen and/or carbon is a crucial factor for catalytic performance, materials stability, and other important applications. While these are fundamental properties in materials science, there is no general understanding of what makes a metal oxophilic or carbophilic, especially for main group metals. In...

The strength of interaction between a metal and oxygen and/or carbon is a crucial factor for catalytic performance, materials stability, and other important applications. While these are fundamental properties in materials science, there is no general understanding of what makes a metal oxophilic or carbophilic, especially for main group metals. In...

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is a widely used tool for quantitative analysis of surfaces, providing critical information about elemental composition and the chemical state(s) of each element. Quantitative analysis of XPS data requires fitting of curves corresponding to different chemical states with appropriate spectral lines. Traditional...

Single-atom alloys can be effective catalysts and have been compared to supported single-atom catalysts. To rationally design single-atom alloys and other surfaces with localized ensembles, it is crucial to understand variations in reactivity when varying the dopant and the ensemble size. Here, we examined hydrogen adsorption on surfaces embedded w...

Producing acetaldehyde, an important industrial chemical, by direct catalytic non-oxidative dehydrogenation of ethanol presents many advantages over current production methods including generating hydrogen. However, a stable, reactive, and selective catalyst is currently unavailable. This work demonstrates that the high reactivity and selectivity o...

div> Single-atom alloys can be effective catalysts and have been compared to supported single-atom catalysts. To rationally design single-atom alloys and other surfaces with localized ensembles, it is crucial to understand variations in reactivity when varying the dopant and the ensemble size. Here, we examined hydrogen adsorption on surfaces emb...

Intensive research in catalysis has resulted in design parameters for many important catalytic re- actions; however, designing new catalysts remains difficult, partly due to the time and expense needed to screen a large number of potential catalytic surfaces. Here, we create a general, efficient model that can be used to screen surface alloys for m...

Nanosystems are gaining momentum in pharmaceutical sciences because of the wide variety of possibilities for designing these systems to have specific functions. Specifically, studies of new cancer cotherapy drug-vitamin release nanosystems (DVRNs) including anticancer compounds and vitamins or vitamin derivatives have revealed encouraging results....

Gold and gold-silver alloys can be active and selective oxidation catalysts. Previous work on gold-silver alloys has suggested that O2 dissociation occurs at bimetallic step sites, but the site responsible for the rest of the reaction steps has not been studied. As a first step in gaining insight into this issue, we investigated the adsorption of o...

Intensive research in catalysis has resulted in design parameters for many important catalytic reactions; however, designing new catalysts remains difficult, partly due to the time and expense needed to screen a large number of potential catalytic surfaces. Here, we create a general, efficient model that can be used to screen surface alloys for man...

Activating pretreatments are used to tune surface composition and structure of bimetallic-alloy catalysts. Herein, the activation-induced changes in material properties of a nanoporous Ag0.03Au0.97 alloy and their subsequent evolution under steady-state CH3OH oxidation conditions are investigated. Activation using O3 results in AgO and Au2O3, stron...

USA-Europe Data Analysis Training School (USEDAT) is a Multi-center Trans-Atlantic initiative offering hands-on training focused in both Introduction to Experimental Data Recording (NMR, MS, IR, 2DGE, EEG, etc.) and/or posterior Computational Data Analysis (Machine Learning, Complex Networks, etc.). We made emphasis on applications in for Cheminfor...

Predicting the outcome of a chemical reaction using efficient computational models can be used to develop high-throughput screening techniques. This can significantly reduce the number of experiments needed to be performed in a huge search space, which saves time, effort and expense. Recently, machine learning methods have been bolstering conventio...

The selective hydrogenation of alkynes to alkenes is an important industrial process. However, achieving high selectivity and reducing the usage of precious platinum group metals is still challenging for the conventional hydrogenation catalysts. With atomically dispersed active metal atoms in the surface of a host metal, single-atom alloys have sho...

Adsorption energies on surfaces are excellent descriptors of their chemical properties, including their catalytic performance. High-throughput adsorption energy predictions can therefore help accelerate first-principles catalyst design. To this end, we present over 5,000 DFT calculations of H adsorption energies on dilute Ag alloys, and describe a...

Despite intensive study of reactions on metals, it is unclear whether electronic excitations play an important role. Here, we show that nonadiabatic effects can indeed play a significant role in N2 and H2 dissociation on Ru nanoparticles. We employ nonadiabatic dynamical calculations based on real-time, time-dependent density functional theory to s...

Oxidative methanol dehydrogenation is a major industrial reaction with global formaldehyde production exceeding 30 million tonnes per year. Unfortunately, oxidative dehydrogenation produces water-aldehyde mixtures that require subsequent distillation. Anhydrous alcohol dehydrogenation is a promising alternative that produces H2 instead of water. Pu...

The four-fold site on {100} facets, which are potential catalytic sites on high-curvature gold nanoparticles, is difficult to prepare on a gold single crystal due to surface reconstruction. Here, the Au(511) surface with a high density of step edges and a well-maintained {100} local structure was studied by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), temp...

Copper surfaces exhibit high catalytic selectivity but have poor hydrogen dissociation kinetics, so we consider icosahedral Cu13 nanoclusters to understand how nanoscale structure might improve catalytic prospects. We find that the spin state is a surprisingly important design consideration. Cu13 clusters have large magnetic moments due to finite s...

The catalytic behavior of Cu surfaces in the anhydrous production of aldehydes from alcohols, a process of industrial significance, is puzzling: the two simplest alcohols (methanol and ethanol) show dramatically different decomposition behavior on Cu. Here, we study the thermodynamic and kinetic processes involved in the anhydrous dehydrogenation o...

The activation of O2 on metal surfaces is a critical process for heterogeneous catalysis and materials oxidation. Fundamental studies of well-defined metal surfaces using a variety of techniques have given crucial insight into the mechanisms, energetics, and dynamics of O2 adsorption and dissociation. Here, trends in the activation of O2 on transit...

The surface structure and composition of a multi-component catalyst are critical factors in determining its catalytic performance. The surface composition can depend on the local pressure of the reacting species, leading to the possibility that the flow through a nanoporous catalyst can affect its structure and reactivity. Here, we explore this pos...

3D nanoporous metals made by alloy corrosion have attracted much attention due to various promising applications ranging from catalysis and sensing to energy storage and actuation. In this work we report a new process for the fabrication of 3D open nanoporous metal networks that phenomenologically resembles the nano-Kirkendall hollowing process pre...

One of the most critical factors in oxidation catalysis is controlling the state of oxygen on the surface. Au and Ag are both effective selective oxidation catalysts for various reactions, and their interactions with oxygen are critical for determining their catalytic performance. Here, we show that the state of oxygen on a catalytic surface can be...

Hydrocarbon chains are important intermediates in various aqueous-phase surface processes, such as CO2 electroreduction, aqueous Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, and aqueous phase reforming of biomass-derived molecules. Further, the interaction between water and adsorbed hydrocarbons represents a difficult case for modern computational methods. Here, we...

Nanoporous Au and other dilute AgAu alloys are highly active and selective oxidation catalysts. Their ability to dissociate O2 is to a large extent unexplained, given that unsupported Au cannot generally dissociate O2, while large ensembles of Ag atoms (>4) are generally necessary to lower the O2 dissociation barrier significantly. Here, we identif...

Decreasing energy consumption in the production of platform chemicals is necessary to improve the sustainability of the chemical industry, which is the largest consumer of delivered energy. The majority of industrial chemical transformations rely on catalysts, and therefore designing new materials that catalyse the production of important chemicals...

The Au(110) surface offers unique advantages for atomically-resolved model studies of catalytic oxidation processes on gold. We investigate the adsorption of oxygen on Au(110) using a combination of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and density functional theory (DFT) methods. We identify the typical (empty-states) STM contrast resulting from ads...

Scaling relations between the molecular structures of reactive intermediates and the strength of the bonds they form with flat surfaces have now been extended to also predict how bonding strength is affected by surface topography. These relations can be applied to design more efficient nanoparticle catalysts.

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) was used to deposit Ni and Pt on alumina supports to form monometallic and bimetallic catalysts with initial particle sizes of 1–2.4 nm. The ALD catalysts were more active (per mass of metal) than catalysts prepared by incipient wetness (IW) for dry reforming of methane (DRM), and they did not form carbon whiskers duri...

Modification of Pt group catalysts by molybdenum is known to improve catalyst performance in a number of important chemical reactions. To investigate fundamental mechanisms responsible for the promoting effect of Mo, temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) and low energy electron diffraction (LEED) experiments were performed to examine the adsorpti...

Oxygenates and hydrocarbons are important in most catalytic processes, such as alcohol oxidation, biomass conversion, petrochemical production, fuel cells, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, and CO2 electroreduction. The heterogeneous catalysts used in these processes are generally found through a trial-and-error process. Given the immense combinatorial sp...

A simple model that predicts the adsorption energy of an arbitrary alkyl in the high-symmetry sites of late transition metal fcc(111) and related surfaces is presented. The model makes predictions based on a few simple attributes of the adsorbate and surface, including the d-shell filling and the matrix coupling element, as well as the adsorption e...

To better understand the nature of alkyl intermediates often invoked in reactions involving hydrocarbon reactants and products, the adsorption of linear and branched C(1)-C(4) alkyls on Cu(111) at 1/4 ML and 1/9 ML coverages was studied using density functional theory. The adsorption energy and site preference are found to be coverage-dependent, an...