Plasmonic, catalytic, and electrolysis bubble nucleation & growth

Plasmonic, catalytic, and electrolysis bubble nucleation & growth
1st supervisor and 1st promotor: Prof. Detlef Lohse
1st supervisor and 3rd promotor: Prof. Xuehua Zhang
2nd supervisor and 2nd promotor: Prof. Harold Zandvliet
Affiliation: University of Twente
Research theme: Catalyst Diagnostics to Develop More Active Catalysts

The central theme of this project is nucleation and phase transitions, mainly of gas and vapor bubbles on surfaces, in the context of catalysis, electrolysis, and on plasmonic nanoparticles. Prior work in aqueous solutions will be extended to non-aqueous solutions of interest for catalytic reactions.

Questions to ask are: How to avoid or at least delay the often detrimental bubble nucleation? How do gas and vapor bubbles nucleate in binary and ternary liquids with different material properties? And a conceptionally very related question: Can we employ similar nucleation processes as those to create nanobubbles and nanodroplets also to create nanoparticles with catalytic properties, which would have a tremendous surface area and would thus be very active?

Keywords:

• Plasmonic bubbles
• catalysis
• Bubble nucleation
• Electrolysis