PVcomB

High-Throughput Material Screening, Mesoporous Materials, Reactor Development

Dr. Lukas Thum

With the increasing desire to apply machine learning methods to heterogeneous catalysis, the demand for vast amounts of clean and reproducible data becomes more and more evident. With our existing tools we can create continuous thin-film material libraries based on co-sputtering (image below) in a very controlled and reproducible single-step synthesis. For the catalytic testing of such libraries, we are developing suitable high-throughput screening reactors.

Next to screening, our tools, based on semi-conductor fabrication methods, also facilitate the development of materials with tailored interfaces for catalysis,² or even pore structures (image below) for e.g. membrane applications. The testing of those materials requires the development of specialized reactors,¹ and operando cells (image below) for characterization.³

Left: Mesoporous layer with tailored properties for membrane applications. Center: Material library synthesis by co-sputtering of four metal sources for high throughput material screening. Right: Low volume operando cell for GIXRD/GIWAXS and optical spectroscopy.

Recent Publications

1. Thum, L. et al. Gradient free measurements of catalyst plates using a Berty reactor. (submitted*) 2025.
2. Thum, L. et al. DE10 2025 104 257.8, 2025.
3. Thum, L. et al. In situ cell for grazing-incidence x-ray diffraction on thin films in thermal catalysis. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 95, 2024.