VICAR: Volcanoes In Catalysis Avoided by Resonance.

Heterogeneous (solid) catalysts are core to chemical manufacturing, used in 80-90% of all chemical-based industrial processes and generating global sales of $1.5 trillion; commodity chemicals in the UK alone turnover £18.4bn per annum. Catalytic acceleration of reactions currently provides access to almost all our most precious resources, including fuel, fertilizer, medicines and cleaning products, basic chemicals, clean air, and polymers, as well as being used for environmental remediation. Conventionally these reactions are limited by the so called "Sabatier limit" - however in this project we aim to validate for the first time the recent proposal (2019/2020) that it is possible to accelerate catalytic reactions beyond these conventional limits by demonstrating the use of external dynamic stimulation. Order-of-magnitude resonant enhancement of catalytic rate has been proposed theoretically, but not experimentally validated. We propose to use types of existing catalyst promotion effects that can be "swtiched on/off" to create the required dynamic stimulation for the first time. Demonstrating this catalysis effect would have far-reaching implications for designing many catalytic processes (not just those selected as prototypes in the current project) and aid scientists and technologists in developing more active and selective catalysts.