Seminar: Designing nanoparticle-support interactions for higher catalytic activity

Our Centre invites you to attend Assistant Professor Sergey Kozlov’s seminar “Designing nanoparticle-support interactions for higher catalytic activity” at 10:30am on Wednesday 25 February 2026. The seminar will be held at UNSW Sydney, and online via Zoom for those joining us from interstate.

Join us for this free event – everyone is welcome!

Abstract:

The catalytic activity of transition metal nanoparticles is well-known to strongly depend on the nature of the support material stabilizing them against agglomeration. However, nanoparticle-support interactions are notoriously challenging to characterize experimentally, so their optimization has mostly relied on a “trial-and-error” approach. In this talk, I will illustrate how density functional simulations of supported nanoparticles can explain the experimental findings and propose novel strategies for further catalyst development. In particular, I will discuss how nanoparticle-support interactions can be used to accelerate alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction on Pt, electrochemical CO2 reduction, as well as thermal CO oxidation on Pd, and methanol synthesis on Cu/ZnO catalysts. Finally, I will outline the mechanistic challenges in the design of catalysts for CO2 hydrogenation into more valuable C2 oxygenates.

Biography:

Sergey Kozlov is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore. He leads the Computational Nanocatalysis research group, which studies chemical reactivity of composite nanostructured materials for catalysis and other applications. He pioneered density functional simulations of nanoparticle-support interfaces in catalysis and collaborated on the development of catalysts for CO2-neutral economy with global petrochemical companies, such as TOTAL and SABIC. His current research focuses on the rational design of improved nanostructured catalysts for methanol synthesis promoted through doping or alloying and collaborative studies with experimental groups within the NUS Green Energy Program.