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报告题目：From biological to heterogeneous catalysis: Spectroscopic studies of ammonia synthesis and decomposition
报告时间：2025-11-24 14:30
报告人： Prof. Serena DeBeer
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion
报告地点：卢嘉锡楼202报告厅
转播地点：翔安校区能源材料大楼3号楼会议室5，漳州校区生化主楼307教室
报告摘要：
Ammonia synthesis, the conversion of inert dinitrogen (N2) to ammonia (NH3) is a process of fundamental biological and economic importance. The reverse reaction, ammonia decomposition, has recently attracted increased attention as a carbon-free hydrogen source. In order to design advanced catalysts that will be essential for a sustainable energy economy, an in-depth understanding of both the biological and chemical mechanisms is required. The focus of my research group is on the development and application of advanced spectroscopic tools, which allow for a detailed description of the atomic level processes in the both the biological and the heterogeneous systems. Specifically, a range of X-ray-based spectroscopic methods is utilized as a unique probe of transition metal active sites in complex media. High-resolution X-ray absorption spectroscopy (HERFD XAS), X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES), X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD), nuclear resonant vibrational spectroscopy (NRVS) and near ambient pressure X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (NAP-XPS) are utilized in combination with EPR, FTIR and Mössbauer. These experiments are correlated to advanced quantum chemical calculations to obtain a detailed picture of the electronic structure of the catalytic systems. Recent advances in our understanding of the nitrogenase enzyme and iron-based ammonia synthesis (and decomposition) catalysts will be presented.
报告人简介：
Serena DeBeer is a Professor and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University, an honorary faculty member at both Ruhr University in Bochum and University of Duisburg Essen, and the group leader of the PINK Beamline at the Energy Materials In‐Situ Laboratory at Helmholtz Zentrum in Berlin. She received her B.S. in Chemistry at Southwestern University in 1995 and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2002. From 2002-2009, she was a staff scientist at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, before moving to her faculty position at Cornell. She is the recipient of a European Research Council Synergy Award (2019), the American Chemical Society Inorganic Chemistry Lectureship Award (2016), the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry Early Career Award (2015), a European Research Council Consolidator Award (2013), a Kavli Fellowship (2012), and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2011). Recently, she received the Seaborg Lectureship Award from UC Berkeley (2023), the R. J. P. Williams lectureship from Oxford (2022) and the Michael Lappert lectureship from the Royal Society of Chemistry (2024). She served as an associate editor for RSC Chemical Science from (2018-2024) and recently moved to the ACS as an associate editor for JACS (2024-present). Research in the DeBeer group is focused on the development and application of advanced X-ray spectroscopic tools for understanding key mechanisms in biological and chemical catalysis.
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