TOUCAN: TOwards an Understanding of CAtalysis on Nanoalloys
Lead Research Organisation:
King's College London
Department Name: Physics
Abstract
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People |
ORCID iD |
Francesca Baletto (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Rossi K
(2020)
Structural Screening and Design of Platinum Nanosamples for Oxygen Reduction
in ACS Catalysis
Zeni C
(2019)
On machine learning force fields for metallic nanoparticles
in Advances in Physics: X
Rossi K
(2019)
Correlating Oxygen Reduction Reaction Activity and Structural Rearrangements in MgO-Supported Platinum Nanoparticles.
in Chemphyschem : a European journal of chemical physics and physical chemistry
Paz-Borbón L
(2017)
A DFT Study on the O2 Adsorption Properties of Supported PtNi Clusters
in Inorganics
López-Estrada O
(2020)
Interdependence of shape and magnetic properties in Al-nanoparticles doped with Ni and Pt
in Journal of Materials Chemistry C
Baletto F
(2019)
Structural properties of sub-nanometer metallic clusters.
in Journal of physics. Condensed matter : an Institute of Physics journal
Rossi K
(2017)
Melting of large Pt@MgO(1 0 0) icosahedra.
in Journal of physics. Condensed matter : an Institute of Physics journal
Schebarchov D
(2018)
Structure, thermodynamics, and rearrangement mechanisms in gold clusters-insights from the energy landscapes framework.
in Nanoscale
Delgado-Callico L
(2021)
A universal signature in the melting of metallic nanoparticles.
in Nanoscale
Description | We have providing new insights on the effect of support and alloy on the catalytic activity of Pt-based nanoparticles.We are developing a model to rational design nanocatalysts. We have published recently a PCCP article on how to introduce a genetic genome to characterise the surface of metallic nanoparticles and providing the first approach to catalysis. We are preparing a more substantial paper to show how to model size-selected samples and their activity. Two new numerical models have been proposed and published on ChemPhysChem and JCP. The kinetic Monte Carlo code presented in JCP is available on GitHub https://github.com/kcl-tscm/KMC_ORR Our last contributions on ACS Cat. and on Nanoscale (2021 - just accepted) have shown the potential of the nanoCHE model we have developed. nanoCHE is a numerical tool which correlated structural changes to their oxidation or reduction activities. |
Exploitation Route | Eventually they could be used to fabricate better nanocatalyts and exploited in fuel cells applications. If a geometrical approach to some chemical reactions will be accepted, this is going to be a quite breakthrough in the today approach to catalysis towards a more predictive science. Codes available at GitHub: https://github.com/kcl-tscm |
Sectors | Education Energy Environment Transport |
URL | https://balettogroup.org |
Description | Stimulating the internal discussion and promoting new international collaborations. A new paper in collaborations with Wales' group (Cambridge) has been published and another between my group, Csanyi (Cambridge) and Bartok (Reading) has been submitted. Further I have published a outreach paper with Johnston: "Catalysts bit by bit", on http://researchfeatures.com/2017/11/01/designing-catalysts-bit-by-bit, which has potential to be used by a wider audience. Several activities at London schools. |
First Year Of Impact | 2016 |
Sector | Education |
Impact Types | Societal |
Description | CCP5 - Summer Internship |
Amount | £4,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 06/2017 |
End | 09/2017 |
Description | CECAM Travel grant 2015 |
Amount | € 350 (EUR) |
Organisation | European Centre of Atomic and Molecular Computation (CECAM) |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | Switzerland |
Start | 05/2015 |
End | 06/2015 |
Description | COST-Action MP0903: TAMC activity |
Amount | £800 (GBP) |
Organisation | European Commission |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 07/2013 |
End | 09/2013 |
Description | EPSRC - HEC Materials Chemistry Consortium |
Amount | £9,000 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/L000202 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2019 |
End | 06/2019 |
Description | HPC3 Europa scheme (Archer time and visit by Prof. D'Agosta) |
Amount | € 3,200 (EUR) |
Organisation | European Commission |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 09/2018 |
End | 12/2018 |
Description | Postdoctoral visit/exchange |
Amount | R$ 50,000 (BRL) |
Organisation | Government of Brazil |
Department | Science without Borders |
Sector | Public |
Country | Brazil |
Start | 05/2016 |
End | 06/2017 |
Description | Psi-K conference funding |
Amount | € 5,000 (EUR) |
Organisation | European Science Foundation (ESF) |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | France |
Start | 12/2016 |
End | 12/2016 |
Description | Royal Society equipment |
Amount | £13,882 (GBP) |
Organisation | The Royal Society |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 08/2012 |
End | 12/2013 |
Description | Workshop support |
Amount | £1,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2016 |
End | 02/2017 |
Description | Workshop support |
Amount | £250 (GBP) |
Organisation | Royal Society of Chemistry |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2016 |
End | 02/2017 |
Description | Workshop support |
Amount | £400 (GBP) |
Organisation | Overleaf |
Sector | Private |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 08/2016 |
End | 02/2017 |
Title | Development of an empirical force field for oxide surfaces |
Description | A new force field has been derived for the simulation of supported platinum clusters on the pristine MgO surface |
Type Of Material | Computer model/algorithm |
Year Produced | 2017 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | Scientific publication a deeper understanding on the building up of Pt-based nanocatalysts |
Title | LoDiS: low dimensional system molecular dynamics |
Description | We have develop and implemented a few tools for the study of metallic nanoparticles (mNPs) in the vacuum and in environment Tools available NVE, NVT classical molecular dynamics itMD: temperature-cycle of NVT simulation, one parameter -called rate- tune the change of the temperature, needed to study nucleation and predicting the caloric curve of mNPs Metadynamics Growth: one-by-one and coalescence (of two clusters) e-LoDiS (environmental LoDiS) additional force field to mimic - the presence of a substrate with different geometrical pattern (e.g. Pt on MgO) - a liquid-like/ligand environment with different coupling with the mNP Post-processing tools: Structural-LoDiS: pair distribution function, chemical radial distribution function, common neighbour analysis, vibrational spectrum from VACF, analytical coordination number and generalised coordination number; geometrical genome cat-LoDiS: estimate of the IV curves for reduction reactions (e.g. ORR) based on a geometrical genome |
Type Of Material | Computer model/algorithm |
Year Produced | 2019 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | we are actually working on making the code available to an academic and then general public, through a IAA-EPSRC grant. |
Description | FAPESP collaboration |
Organisation | Universidade de São Paulo |
Country | Brazil |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Providing Pt nanoparticles for ethanol catalysis |
Collaborator Contribution | Ethanol catalysis on surfaces |
Impact | A paper is in preparation. Dr Vagner Rigo will come as senior post doc from June 2016 May 2017 supported by a Science without Border fellowship. Thanks to this collaborations, our groups will take part to the KCL/USP week to be held on 11-13 May 2016. |
Start Year | 2012 |
Description | Leuven-KCL collaboration |
Organisation | University of Leuven |
Country | Belgium |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Collaboration started in Feb 2020 through a EU-HPC3 scheme which brought up we provide numerical support to explain the covalent bond of Ar-atoms around small Au-based nano clusters. |
Collaborator Contribution | They provided experimental data (IR spectra and mass-spectrometry) of Au-based nano clusters |
Impact | 1. Stability of cationic silver doped gold clusters and the subshell-closed electronic configuration of AgAu14+ Ferrari, Piero ; Delgado-Callico, Laia ; Lievens, Peter ; Baletto, Francesca ; Janssens, Ewald JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS, Volume 153 Issue 24 2. Benchmarking density functional theory methods for cationic metal-argon complexes Theoretical Chemistry Accounts Delgado-Callico, Laia, Ferrari, Piero ; Baletto, Francesca ; Janssens, Ewald, just accepted on Theo. Chem. Acc. 2021 Another manuscript is its writing-up progress. |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | Padova-KCL collaboration |
Organisation | University of Padova |
Country | Italy |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We are offering our expertise in creating a database of potential structures for AuRh nano catalysts |
Collaborator Contribution | The Padova team has sent a PhD student to work over a 3-month period with us. They are Exeter in optical and photocatalytic properties of nanomaterials. |
Impact | Not yet (due to cover the HPC visit has been delayed) |
Start Year | 2020 |
Title | LoDiS-MD: low dimensional systems molecular dynamics |
Description | LoDiS-MD: low dimensional systems molecular dynamics is a softaware tool wirtten in Fotran90 designed specifically to the study of metallic nanoparticles. There is long varierty of tools such as ionic minimization one-by-one growth nucleation thermal stability metadynamics It is now coming with a post-processing tool for the geometrical analysis of metallic nanoparticles |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2015 |
Impact | Elucidating how the geometrical shape may influence the physicochemical properties of nano-objects (shape-property relationship) has acquired more and more importance in the design of devices for target applications. We plan to put the code open-sources in two-three years once more potential and how to describe external enviroments will be implemented (our top priority). This will allow small compnies and academics to create a complete database for objects at the nanoscale not only with their peculiar structures but including their thermal stability and hints for investigating their physico-chemical properties. |
Description | 2nd Meeting of the American Initiative on Metal Clusters and Nanoalloys, San Antonio, Texas, USA |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Dr. Lauro Oliver Paz-Borbon gave an invited talk on "Embracing the substrate for studying the catalytic properties of Pt-Ni nanoalloys" at a USA meeting on nano clusters. This community is quite well-known and gave him the possibility to become in contact with Dr. Gregory Guisbiers and together they are organising a symposium at the next MRS-conference in Cancun. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | CCP9 Young Researchers' event (25-26 March 2016) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Pico-talk (1 slide - 60 s) + Poster by Dr. Gian Giacomo Asara We advise our colleagues about the research presented in our poster. We focused on O2 adsorption on core-shell PtNi supported nanoparticles highlighting the effect of shape, alloying, interaction with an oxide support and chemical composition at the interface. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | CECAM Meeting 2015-Toulose |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | I gave an invited talk on "Modelling metal-based nanoparticles: toward realistic environments". Further discussion gave me the possibility to reach the interest of Johnson Matthey. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | COST Action Final Meeting: AuCu and AgAu nanocages |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
Results and Impact | My presentation stimulated a discussion afterwards Scientific network boosted |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
Description | ECOSS-2015: Barcelona |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Invited talk at the ECOSS 2015 on ""Modelling Nanocatalysts", several questions after my talks and potential new collaboration across Europe. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | ENGE: International Conference on Electronic Materials and Nanotechnology for Green Environment, Jeju, South Korea |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Dr. Lauro Oliver Paz-Borbon gave an invited talk on "O2 adsorption trends on small supported Pt-Ni clusters: Towards an efficient nanocatalyst design", presenting our common results obtained during his time as PDRA at KCL. The audience was listening carefully and asked several questions. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | ICTP-College on Multiscale Computational Modeling of Materials for Energy Applications |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | I did three presentations at this International School host by the Unesco-ICTP. One presentation was a long invited talk (a keynote) on my recent research. Then we did a half-day school on the software we are developing and maintaining in my research group. My PhD, Mr Kevin Rossi, attended and helped during this activity. Further I made a presentation on being an outreach activity to support female academic staff, and in particular on "Being an Academic Mum" |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
URL | http://indico.ictp.it/event/7656/ |
Description | ISSPIC XIX- Invited talk |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | More than 100 people (academics/postdocs/PhD) attended the conference, the main international conference in the field. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
Description | International Symposium on 'Semiconductor Clusters and Nanoparticles: Geometric, Electronic, and Optical Properties', Berlin |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | An invited talk to an Int. Symposium linked to a DFG program (German platform grant). This allowed me to show my results to a wide a new community. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | International Workshop on Nanoalloys |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | A quite select group of people working on nano alloys across Europe (following the previous COST-Action network we had). One day presentation, I was invited to give a talk, and the second day dedicated to established a new network. A Faraday discussion meeting is likely to happen in 2018 and I have been offered my support to organise it. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | Invited Lecture at the CATSENSE Summer School, Leuven, Sept 2017 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | It was a privilege to be invited to give a talk to such a high qualified group of students and post-doc actively involved in different aspects of catalysis, as they are part of a EU collaboration. Several questions afterwards. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Invited Talk at the Faraday Joint Interest Group, Warwick 2017 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Invited talk at the first join Faraday Discussion meeting organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry. A good discussion afterwards. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Invited talk at Cost-Action, Graz, Austria, Feb 2018 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Delivered a talk to an International community -which gather various EU group under the umbrella of COST-Action CM-1405 MOLIM. Several questions and discussion afterwards. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | https://www.staff.tugraz.at/andreas.hauser/molim2018/ |
Description | Invited talk at the CECAM-meeting on "Modeling metal-based nanoparticles: environment and dynamical effects", 3-5 Dec. 2018 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | A CECAM workshop attended by at least 50 members, including people involved in the IRN-network. FB delivered an invited talk which attracted a considerable attention and further activities/collaborations can born from that. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
Description | Invited talk at the ICTP-Workshop on "Workshop on Crystal Structure Prediction" 14-16 January 2019 21 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | More than 50 between academics, young researcher from different world institutions -including a strong participation from 3rd countries- attended that workshop. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | Invited talk at the International Symposium Semiconductor Clusters and Nanoparticles, Berlin 2017 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Invited talk to a quite heterogeneous audience working on nanoscale systems. Several questions afterwards and new contacts were made during the event. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Launch of the EPSRC-Tier2 MMM-Hub |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | A significant audience for the launch event of the new Tier2 HPC facility which serve London academic groups working on computational material science. The talk was well received by the audience. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Pacific Chem 2015: Hawaii |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Invited talk on "Supported metallic and bimetallic nanocatalysts". Several new contacts. An invitation to present my work at the Palmer's group in Birmingham. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | Psi-K 2015: San Sebastian (several contributions) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | A. Poster Presentation on "Understanding the catalytic activity of large polyhedral nanoparticles from first-principles", presenter Dr GianGiacomo Asara We introduced to other colleagues from all around the world our roadmap that allows to extrapolate results obtained using small in-silico models to experimental sizes. B. Poster Presentation on "Thermodynamics of CuPt via DFT fitted potential" by Mr. K. Rossi C. Poster Presentation on "Topological effects on the magentization of platinum nanoclusters" |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | RSC solsurf 2016: London |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Poster presentation on "On solid-solid transitions in nanoalloys, towards stable and functional architectures" by Mr. Kevin Rossi |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | School Visit (St Eugene) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Schools |
Results and Impact | 30 pupils attended a "Meet a scientist" event at their school. They made several questions during and after the presentation. The school put the event on their newsletter and we hope to invite a short cohort of students to visit the Physics department at KCL. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | School Visit (St Mary) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Schools |
Results and Impact | 30 pupils (Year 5) attended a "Meet a scientist" presentation I made at their school. Several questions and discussions during and after the presentation. The school reported a strong interest in science subjects. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
Description | Seminar at DIPC and UPV, San Sebastian, Spain "Unravelling morphologies and chemical ordering at the nanoscale" |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
Results and Impact | Seminar at DIPC, San Sebastian on "Unravelling morphologies and chemical ordering at the nanoscale" June 2014 My talk stimulates the discussion on how we can model the shape-property relationship. Networking |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
Description | THIS: Theory of Hetero-Interfaces and Surfaces. Yonsei University, Winter School 2016, Seúl, South Korea |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Dr. Lauro Oliver Paz-Borbon gave an invited talk on "Physics and Chemistry of nanoclusters" showing our common results on Pt onto MgO and the adsorption of O2 onto Pt and PtNi MgO-supported. The audience was mixed, PhD and PDRA students and they have asked different questions. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | TOUCAN Meeting 2015: London |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Annual TOUCAN MEETING, working group related to the EPSRC Critical Mass EP/J010812/1 |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | TYC 10B'Day (two contributions) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | TYC 10th anniversary, london A. "Get in Touch and Keep in Contact": interface effect on the ORR activity for supported PtNi nanoparticles by Dr GianGiacomo Asara B. Poster presentation on "Nanothermodynamics: molecular dynamics vs nested sampling" by Mr. Kevin Rossi |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | TYC-Energy workshop and Toucan conference |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | I was the main organiser of the 4th TYC-Energy workshop held at King's College London. On top of the full organisation, I made a presentation on numerical methods for the design of nano catalysts. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
URL | http://www.thomasyoungcentre.org/events/energy-materials-workshop |
Description | Understanding the catalytic activity of polyhedral nanoparticles from first principles |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | A talk presentation by Dr. Asara at the Psi-K conference held in San Sebastian Sept. 2015. Psi-K is the largest conference on numerical modelling. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | Understanding the catalytic activity of polyhedral nanoparticles from first principles |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | An invited talk given by Dr. Asara at the FisMat2015, the international conference organised by the Italian Physics Society. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |